# Symmetric patterns of dislocations in Thomson’s problem

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## Abstract

Determination of the classical ground state arrangement of $`N`$ charges on the surface of a sphere (Thomson’s problem) is a challenging numerical task. For special values of $`N`$ we have obtained using the ring removal method of Toomre, low energy states in Thomson’s problem which have icosahedral symmetry where lines of dislocations run between the 12 disclinations which are induced by the spherical geometry into the near triangular lattice which forms on a local scale.

PACS numbers: 41.20.Cv, 73.90.+f

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Thomson’s problem consists of finding the ground state of $`N`$ Coulomb charges confined to move on the surface of a sphere. While this problem is simple to specify its solution is not. It has been studied by many authors, see  and references therein. On a local scale, charges are disposed like those on a triangular lattice and each charge has 6 nearest neighbors. On the other hand, Euler’s theorem guarantees the existence of at least 12 fivefold disclinations (charges with only 5 nearest neighbors) on the sphere. More precisely, if $`v_i`$ is the number of charges with $`i`$ nearest neighbors, then

$$\underset{i}{}(6i)v_i=12.$$
(1)   
There exist methods to place the charges in configurations with just 12 disclinations each of which is at the corners of an icosahedron, see Ref. . Those configurations are called icosadeltahedral and only exist when $`N`$ is given by

$$N=10(h^2+hk+k^2)+2,$$
(2)   
with $`h`$ and $`k`$ integers.

It was suggested in Ref.  that these configurations might be the ground states of Thomson’s problem. Further work showed, however, that configurations with dislocations (bound pairs of fivefold and sevenfold disclination) have less energy than icosadeltahedral configurations , as lines of dislocations emanating from the disclinations act to screen the disclinations by reducing their strains fields . However, we were unable to find any patterns of icosahedral symmetry containing dislocations . It is the purpose of this Brief Report to show that such patterns can be found if one uses the “ring removal” technique of Toomre .

Each disclination in an icosadeltahedral configuration is surrounded by rings of $`5n`$ charges, where $`n`$ is the order number of the ring. By removing the charges in one of these rings and then relaxing the energy of the system it is possible to obtain a configuration with 5 dislocations symmetrically disposed around the disclination. Removing several rings we can get lines of dislocations which act to screen the disclination as predicted by Dodgson and Moore . One must be careful how one chooses the rings to be removed; if one removes consecutive rings the final configurations are not usually symmetric. In Fig. 1 we have plotted an icosadeltahedral configuration with $`h=k=20`$, i.e. 12002 charges, after removing the 3rd and 7th rings around each disclination. This type of initial configuration was used in conjunction with standard numerical procedures (mostly the conjugate gradient method) to minimize the interaction energy $`E`$ of the Coulomb charges with each other.

It is possible to estimate the total number of rings $`n_r`$ to be removed around each disclination (but not the actual ring numbers themselves, unfortunately) as follows. In Fig 2 are shown examples of regions (which we shall refer to as facets) for icosadeltahedral configurations which naively one would expect to have three equal sides but which cannot achieve this because of the spherical geometry.

Let us denote by $`A`$ and $`A^{}`$ the length of the equal sides of the facets and $`B`$ the remaining one. $`A=A^{}<B`$. These lengths can be calculated by simple geometric arguments. For the case $`h=k`$ one has

$$A=R\mathrm{tan}^1\left(\frac{\alpha /2}{\mathrm{cos}\frac{2\pi }{10}}\right),$$
(3)   
and

$$B=R\mathrm{cos}^1\left(10.690983\mathrm{sin}^2A/R\right),$$
(4)   
where $`R`$ is the radius of the sphere and $`\alpha `$ is the angle between two neighboring disclinations where

$$\alpha =2\mathrm{tan}^1\left(\frac{\sqrt{5}1}{2}\right).$$
(5)   
For $`h>k=0`$, $`A`$ is given by

$$A=\frac{R\alpha }{2}.$$
(6)   
One should note that the above is only exact for $`h`$ even. When $`h`$ is odd, $`A`$ is slightly larger but since the difference tends to zero as $`h`$ increases we shall not take it into account.

To triangulate each facet one subdivides $`A`$ and $`B`$ into $`D_A`$ and $`D_B`$ segments respectively. In Fig 2 $`D_A`$ and $`D_B`$ are both equal to $`3`$, but this need not be the case for larger values of $`N`$. To find the number of rings to take out, $`n_r`$, one requires that $`A/D_A`$ be as close as possible to $`B/D_B`$, since then the spacing between charges will be most uniform, thereby minimizing the strain field energy caused by the spherical geometry. The difference between $`D_A`$ and $`D_B`$ is then the number of rings to remove, $`n_r`$. With this in mind we obtain the following expression for $`n_r`$:

$$n_r=\mathrm{Round}\left[\left(1\frac{A}{B}\right)D_B\right],$$
(7)   
where the function Round\[$`x`$\] gives the closest integer to $`x`$. $`D_B`$ is related to the number of particles $`N`$ by the relation

$$D_B=\sqrt{\frac{N2}{p}},$$
(8)   
for the case $`h=k`$, $`p=30`$ while for $`h>k=0`$, $`p=40`$. Thus, within this approximation, one is able to estimate out how many rings to remove for given $`h`$ and $`k`$. In Tables 1 and 2 we show for both cases the value of $`N`$ at which $`n_r`$ changes its value. These estimates of $`N`$ are consistent with our observations on systems with up to 16000 particles. We have not studied the general case $`h>k>0`$ as it is difficult to identify the facets to triangulate.

We next describe how we are going to report our values for this energy. Using Ewald sums one can calculate the energy for charges on an infinite plane triangular lattice  and deduce that for the sphere with unit radius and for unit charges 

$$2E=N^21.1061033\mathrm{}N^{3/2}+\mathrm{},$$
(9)   
as $`N\mathrm{}`$. It is useful therefore to study $`E_i`$ given by

$$E_i=\frac{2EN^2}{N^{3/2}},$$
(10)   
which will approach $`1.1061033\mathrm{}`$ as $`N\mathrm{}`$. We will refer to $`E_i`$ as the “energy” of the system.

We examine first configurations with $`h=k`$. For them the final configurations obtained after energy relaxation following ring removal have dislocations on the lines between the disclinations as envisaged in . Fig. 3 is an example of a configuration with ($`h=k=20`$) minus the 2nd and 9th rings around each disclination so containing 11342 charges. In Figs. 4 and 5 we have plotted ($`h=k=23`$) minus 2nd and 10th rings in the former and minus 3rd and 9th rings in the latter. Dislocations obtained by removing the second ring are bent forming pentagonal “buttons”  as in Figs. 3 and 4. Fig.5 is very similar to the kind of pattern which was suggested in .

When $`hk`$, the dislocations obtained after removing rings are not on the lines between disclinations but between these lines. The resulting patterns are therefore of lower symmetry. In any of these three cases, dislocations place themselves onto a line rotated an angle $`\theta `$ from the line between disclinations given by

$$\mathrm{cos}\theta =\frac{(h+k)(1+\mathrm{cos}2\pi /5)}{\sqrt{(h^2+k^2+2hk\mathrm{cos}2\pi /5)(2+2\mathrm{cos}2\pi /5)}}$$
(11)   
In Figs. 6 and 7 we study ($`h=40,k=0`$) minus 2nd and 10th rings in the former and minus 3rd and 9th rings in the latter.

In conclusion, we have demonstrated that for certain values of $`N`$ there are low energy arrangements of the charges which have full icosahedral symmetry. For these special values of $`N`$ Thomson’s problem seems to reduce to the much simpler task of finding which rings when removed minimize the energy.

APG would like to acknowledge a grant and financial support from CajaMurcia and EPSRC under grant GR/K53208. We thank A. Toomre for telling us about his “ring removal” method prior to its publication.