Electrostatic lattice energy in ionic crystals: optimization of the convergence of Ewald series

Abstract

Ewald's method is reconsidered to express the dependence of Madelung energy on the ionic charges explicitly, also taking into account the space-group symmetry of the structure. Upper bounds for the residues of the two partial series have been calculated by integral approximation; that relative to the direct-lattice series is shown to depend on the cube root of the unit-cell volume. The optimum value of the parameter A, which equalizes the rates of convergence of the two sums and minimizes the total number of terms, has been determined numerically for a given termination error and for a range of unit-cell dimensions. Theoretical results are tested by calculations on some specific crystal structures.