On the Madelung energy of spherical Coulomb clusters

We perform large-scale molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of Coulomb clust ers in a spherical trapping field. The fast multipole method have been empl oyed to simulate clusters of up to 5 x 10(4) particles while previous inves tigations are limited to clusters of less than 5000 particles, It is found that the Madelung energy of bce clusters with reconstructed surfaces is sub stantially smaller than the extrapolated values based on the previous resul ts for smaller multilayered icosahedral clusters. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.