Absence of diagonal force constants in cubic Coulomb crystals.

The quasi-harmonic model proposes that a crystal can be modelled as atoms connected by springs. We demonstrate how this viewpoint can be misleading: a simple application of Gauss's law shows that the ion-ion potential for a cubic Coulomb system can have no diagonal harmonic contribution and so cannot necessarily be modelled by springs. We investigate the repercussions of this observation by examining three illustrative regimes: the bare ionic, density tight-binding and density nearly-free electron models.