Structure and Cohesive Energy of Large Spherical Coulomb Clusters

The ground state of spherical clusters of charged particles of one species confined by the three-dimensional parabolic potential is investigated by molecular dynamics simulations with the system size from N = 5000 to N = 1.2 × 10(5) . The cohesive energy per particle is compared between the shell-structured clusters and spherical finite bcc lattices with relaxed surfaces, the former and the latter being the ground states for small systems and for the large enough systems, respectively. It is shown that, when N > N(c)(N(c) > N), finite bcc lattices with relaxed surfaces (the shell structures) have stronger cohesion than the shell structures (finite bcc lattices with relaxed surfaces) and the critical value of the transition N(c) is estimated to be 10(4) < N(c) < 1.4 × 10(4) . The nucleation of the bcc lattice in the shell-structured cluster of 2 × 10(4) ions is observed.