Various concepts of Riesz energy of measures and application to condensers with touching plates (Q2006371)

Let \(n\geq 3\) and \(0<\alpha \leq 2\). The \(\alpha \)-Riesz potential of a signed Radon measure \(\mu \) on \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\) is defined by \(\kappa_{\alpha }\mu (x)=\int \left\vert x-y\right\vert ^{\alpha -n}d\mu (y)\), and the usual \(\alpha \)-Riesz energy is given by \(E_{\alpha }(\mu )=\int \kappa_{\alpha }\mu ~d\mu \). However, this notion of energy is unsuitable for studying minimum energy problems for condensers with touching plates. This motivates the authors to develop further the theory of weak \(\alpha \)-Riesz energy, which they recently introduced in [Potential Anal. 51, No. 2, 197--217 (2019; Zbl 1432.31006)]. This is defined by \(\int (\kappa _{\alpha /2}\mu )^{2}dm\), where \(m\) denotes the Lebesgue measure on \(\mathbb{R}^{n}\), and coincides with \(E_{\alpha}(\mu )\) when \(\mu \) is a positive measure. The authors investigate minimum weak \(\alpha \)-Riesz energy problems with external fields (in both the constrained and unconstrained settings) for condensers with plates that may touch. They also describe the relationship between minimum weak \(\alpha \)-Riesz energy problems over signed measures associated with generalized condensers \((A_{1},A_{2})\) and minimum \(\alpha \)-Green energy problems over positive measures carried by \(A_{1}\). They succeed in recovering and improving results that were announced in [\textit{P. D. Dragnev} et al., Potential Anal. 44, No. 3, 543--577 (2016; Zbl 1338.31008)], but which relied on a lemma that turned out to be erroneous.