AN EFFICIENT FAST-MULTIPOLE ALGORITHM-BASED ON AN EXPANSION IN THE SOLID HARMONICS

We present an efficient variant of the fast-multipole method for calcu lating long-range interactions in three-dimensional Coulombic systems. Using a multipole expansion based on the solid harmonics instead of t he more common spherical harmonics leads to a greater increase in comp utational efficiency than a recently-reported fast-Fourier transform m ethod, with none of the overhead associated with that approach. (C) 19 96 American Institute of Physics.