Electrostatic interactions in slabs of polarizable particles

We present results of a study of electrostatic interactions in slabs consisting of L layers with polarizable spheres on a two-dimensional Bravais lattice in an externally applied electric field. A multipole expansion to describe N-particle electrostatic interactions, introduced by the authors in a simultaneously published paper, has been used to calculate the induced dipoles on particles in the respective layers of the slab. The conclusion is that the induced dipoles differ from their bulk values if situated near the surface, and these differences depend strongly on the internal structure of the slabs. With these results the surface energy has been calculated. Moreover, the local electric field has been studied as a function of the distance from the surface of the slab. These results are compared with a mean field approximation where each particle is considered to be surrounded by a homogeneous polarization. The differences between both models are striking.