  In the finite difference method which is commonly used in computational
micromagnetics, the demagnetizing field is usually computed as a convolution of
the magnetization vector field with the demagnetizing tensor that describes the
magnetostatic field of a cuboidal cell with constant magnetization. An
analytical expression for the demagnetizing tensor is available, however at
distances far from the cuboidal cell, the numerical evaluation of the
analytical expression can be very inaccurate.
  Due to this large-distance inaccuracy numerical packages such as OOMMF
compute the demagnetizing tensor using the explicit formula at distances close
to the originating cell, but at distances far from the originating cell a
formula based on an asymptotic expansion has to be used. In this work, we
describe a method to calculate the demagnetizing field by numerical evaluation
of the multidimensional integral in the demagnetization tensor terms using a
sparse grid integration scheme. This method improves the accuracy of
computation at intermediate distances from the origin.
  We compute and report the accuracy of (i) the numerical evaluation of the
exact tensor expression which is best for short distances, (ii) the asymptotic
expansion best suited for large distances, and (iii) the new method based on
numerical integration, which is superior to methods (i) and (ii) for
intermediate distances. For all three methods, we show the measurements of
accuracy and execution time as a function of distance, for calculations using
single precision (4-byte) and double precision (8-byte) floating point
arithmetic. We make recommendations for the choice of scheme order and
integrating coefficients for the numerical integration method (iii).
