Extending the fast multipole method for charges inside a dielectric sphere in an ionic solvent: high-order image approximations for reaction fields (Q2464988)

The aim of this paper is to extend the fast multipole method (FMM) for electrostatic calculation to handle charges inside a dielectric sphere in an ionic solvent and is a follow up of a previous paper by the authors [J. Comput. Phys. 223 846--864 (2007; Zbl 1183.78038)]. The main object is to find approximations of the reaction field of a point charge inside a dielectric sphere in an ionic solvent. The derived approximations are up to fourth-order accurate in terms of a ionic strength parameter (the product of the inverse Debye screening length and the radius of the sphere). The technique is to split up the potential inside the sphere into a Coulomb potential due to the point charge and a reaction potential. The reaction potential can further be split up in potentials for an image point and line charge. The line potential is discretized by using Gaussian quadrature rules. In addition, the authors analyze the computational complexity to show that their work fits into the asymptotically optimal \(\mathcal{O}(N)\) operations fast multipole method. The results are supported by some numerical tests.