Department of Mathematics, and Institute of Natural Sciences, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, 200240, China.
Interdiscip Sci. 2012 Mar;4(1):19-26. doi: 10.1007/s12539-012-0113-1. Epub 2012 Mar 6.
Electrostatic interactions between multiple colloids in ionic fluids are attracting much attention in studies of biological and soft matter systems. The evaluation of the polarization surface charges due to the spherical dielectric discontinuities poses a challenging problem to highly efficient computer simulations. In this paper, we propose a new method for fast calculating the electric field of spaced spheres using the multiple reflection expansion. The method uses a technique of recursive reflections among the spherical interfaces based on a formula of the multiple image representation, resulting in a simple, accurate and close-form expression of the surface polarization charges. Numerical calculations of the electric potential energies of charged spheres demonstrate the method is highly accurate with small number of reflections, and thus attractive for the use in practical simulations of related problems such as colloid suspension and macromolecular interactions.
在生物和软物质系统的研究中，离子液体中多个胶体之间的静电相互作用引起了广泛关注。由于球形介电不连续性而引起的极化表面电荷的评估对高效计算机模拟提出了挑战。在本文中，我们提出了一种使用多次反射扩展快速计算间距球体电场的新方法。该方法基于多图像表示公式，在球形界面之间使用递归反射技术，从而得到表面极化电荷的简单、精确和闭式表达式。带电球体的电势能的数值计算表明，该方法在少量反射的情况下具有很高的准确性，因此对于胶体悬浮液和大分子相互作用等相关问题的实际模拟具有吸引力。
