Fast calculation of the electrostatic potential in ionic crystals by direct summation method

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new real space method for efficiently calculating the electrostatic potential in ionic crystals, achieving exponential convergence using simple algebraic functions, offering an alternative to Ewald's method.

Contribution

It extends Evjen's method with a general analysis that ensures exponential convergence, providing a simpler algebraic approach for potential calculation in ionic crystals.

Findings

Achieves exponential convergence rate in potential calculation.

Comparable efficiency to Ewald's method with simpler functions.

Provides a practical alternative for electrostatic potential evaluation.

Abstract

An efficient real space method is derived for the evaluation of the Madelung's potential of ionic crystals. The proposed method is an extension of the Evjen's method. It takes advantage of a general analysis for the potential convergence in real space. Indeed, we show that the series convergence is exponential as a function of the number of annulled multipolar momenta in the unit cell. The method proposed in this work reaches such an exponential convergence rate. Its efficiency is comparable to the Ewald's method, however unlike the latter, it uses only simple algebraic functions.