On the ground state of the one-component classical plasma

The authors consider the nu -dimensional one-component classical plasma model in a spherical domain. They give a heuristic derivation of the H-stability bounds which enables one to understand their physical meaning as well as the nature of the ground state. Then, accurate estimations of the binding energy of various Wigner lattices are found theoretically as well as computed numerically. For nu -2 dimensions, the lowest energy configuration of particles corresponds to the triangular lattice. For nu =3 dimensions, the results agree with those of Coldwell-Horsfall and Maradudin (1960).