Surface energy of the one-dimensional supersymmetric $t-J$ model with unparallel boundary fields

We investigate the thermodynamic limit of the exact solution, which is given by an inhomogeneous $T-Q$ relation, of the one-dimensional supersymmetric $t-J$ model with unparallel boundary magnetic fields. It is shown that the contribution of the inhomogeneous term at the ground state satisfies the $L^{-1}$ scaling law, where $L$ is the system-size. This fact enables us to calculate the surface (or boundary) energy of the system. The method used in this paper can be generalized to study the thermodynamic limit and surface energy of other models related to rational R-matrices.