Communication: on the origin of the surface term in the Ewald formula.
A transparent derivation of the Ewald formula for the electrostatic energy of a periodic three-dimensional system of point charges is presented. The problem of the conditional convergence of the lattice sum is dealt with by separating off, in a physically natural and mathematically simple way, long-range non-absolutely integrable contributions in the series. The general expression, for any summation order, of the surface (or dipole) term emerges very directly from those long-range contributions.
Institut UTINAM, Université de Franche-Comté, UMR CNRS 6213, 16 Route de Gray, 25030 Besançon cedex, France.
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Ballenegger