Electriostatic Energy in 3D.pdf

On Numerical Approximation ofElectrostatic Energy in 3D Daniele FinocchiaroScuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italyfino@cibs.sns.itandMarco PellegriniInstitute for Computational Mathematics of CNR, Pisa, Italypellegrini@r.itandPaolo BientinesiUniversity of Pisa, Pisa, Italybientin@r.it July 27th, 1998 Subject classication: 78A30 (Electrostatics), 65D30 (Numerical Integration),65Y25 (Computational Geometry), 53C65 (Integral Geometry). Proposed running head:NUMERICAL APPROXIMATION OF ELECTROSTATIC ENERGY Reference Author:Marco PELLEGRINIIstituto di Matematica Computazionale del CNRvia S. Maria 46I-56126 Pisa, Italye-mail: pellegrini@r.itphone: (00)+39-50-593452fax: (00)+39-50-593524 2 AbstractApproximating the Coulomb self-energy of a charge distribution within a 3-dimensionaldomain and the mutual Coulomb energy of two charge distributions constitutes often acomputational bottleneck in the simulation of physical systems. The present article reportson a recently developed computational technique aimed at the numerical evaluation of the 6-dimensional integrals arising from Coulomb interactions. Techniques from integral geometryare used to show a reduction of the domain from 6-dimensional to 2-dimensional. In theprocess analytic singularities due to Coulombs law are eliminated. Experimental results onthe self energy of a charged cube show that the proposed method converges rapidly and iscompetitive with methods proposed in literature for similar integration problems. 3 1 Introduction1.1 The problemSuppose we are given a domain D  R3 in 3-space and a volume charge density function dened in D; the electrostatic or Coulomb self-energy of D using the Gaussian unit systemis given by the following 6-dimensional integral:ED = 12 Zp1;p22D (p1)(p2)jp1 p2j dp1 dp2: (1)If we are given two domains D1 and D2 in 3-space, endowed respectively with volumecharge density functions 1 and 2, the mutual Coulomb energy is given by the following6-dimensional integral:ED1;D2 = Zp12D1 Zp2