Electrostatic interaction energies of homogeneous cubic charge distributions

Abstract

The starting point is the problem of finding the interaction energy of two coinciding homogeneous cubic charge distributions. The brute force method of subdividing the cube into $N^3$ sub-cubes and doing the sums results in slow convergence because of the Coulomb singularity. Using symmetry and algebra the Coulomb singularities can be eliminated. This leads to an accurate numerical algorithm as well as an interesting exact result relating the desired interaction energy to three other interaction energies, namely those of cubes touching each other at a face, at an edge, and at a corner, respectively. As an application a simple model illustrating Wigner crystallization is presented.