Charge, Dipole & Electric Fields

This section handles electrostatic effects in the system.

• NetCharge: Sets the total charge of the simulation cell. Siesta automatically adds a compensating background charge to maintain neutrality.
• Slab Dipole Correction: For slab calculations (surfaces), this corrects for spurious electrostatic interactions between periodic images of the slab, which is essential for obtaining correct work functions and surface energies.
• External Electric Field: Applies a uniform, static electric field to the system, useful for studying the response of materials to external fields (e.g., Stark effect).