The cooperative energy transfer from a donor ion to two-particle acceptors is recently experimentally observed in many optically pumped rare-earth doped crystals and may appear in excitation quenching processes, as well as in down-conversion and sensitization energy transfer. Our theoretical study and computer simulation of cooperative three-body interaction for an ensemble of particles with different dimensions d, concentrations c, and multipolarity S have shown that donor fluorescence decay due to cooperative quenching corresponds to the asymptotic law I(t) similar to exp[-(Wt)(d/2S)-d] at the long-time stage. The power dependence of the cooperative quenching rate on the acceptor particle concentration was deduced to be W similar to c(2S/d) (c) 2006 Published by Elsevier B.V.