  A point particle approximation to the classical dynamics of well separated
vortices of the abelian Higgs model is developed. A static vortex is
asymptotically identical to a solution of the linearized field theory (a
Klein-Gordon/Proca theory) in the presence of a singular point source at the
vortex centre. It is shown that this source is a composite scalar monopole and
magnetic dipole, and the respective charges are determined numerically for
various values of the coupling constant. The interaction potential of two well
separated vortices is computed by calculating the interaction Lagrangian of two
such point sources in the linear theory. The potential is used to model type II
vortex scattering.
