Causal variational principles in the \(\sigma\)-locally compact setting: existence of minimizers (Q2156038)

The authors consider a smooth manifold \(\mathcal{F}\) and a non-negative function \(\mathcal{L}:\mathcal{F}\times \mathcal{F}\rightarrow \lbrack 0,\infty )\) (the Lagrangian), which is supposed to be symmetric and lower semi-continuous. The causal variational principle consists to minimize the action \(\mathcal{S}\) defined as the double integral of the Lagrangian: \( \mathcal{S}(\rho )=\int_{\mathcal{F}}\int_{\mathcal{F}}\mathcal{L}(x,y)d\rho (y)d\rho (x)\), under variations of the measure \(\rho \) within the class of regular Borel measures, keeping the total volume \(\rho (\mathcal{F})\) fixed (here infinite). The authors assume that the measure \(\rho \) is locally finite and that the function \(\mathcal{L}(x,\cdot )\) is \(\rho \)-integrable for all \(x\in \mathcal{F}\) and satisfies \(\sup_{x\in \mathcal{F}}\int_{ \mathcal{F}}\mathcal{L}(x,y)d\rho (y)<\infty \). For a regular Borel measure \( \rho \) on \(\mathcal{F}\), a regular Borel measure \(\widetilde{\rho }\) on \( \mathcal{F}\) is a variation of finite volume if \(\left\vert \widetilde{\rho } -\rho \right\vert (\mathcal{F})<\infty \) and \((\widetilde{\rho }-\rho )( \mathcal{F})=0\). A regular Borel measure \(\rho \) is a minimizer of the causal action if the difference \(\mathcal{S}(\widetilde{\rho })-\mathcal{S} (\rho )\) is non-negative for all regular Borel measures \(\widetilde{\rho }\) which are variations of finite volume. Now assuming that \(\mathcal{F}\) is a second-countable and locally compact Hausdorff space, that the Lagrangian \( \mathcal{L}:\mathcal{F}\times \mathcal{F}\rightarrow \mathbb{R}_{0}^{+}\) is a symmetric and lower semi-continuous function, and that \(\mathcal{L}\) satisfies \(\mathcal{L}(x,x)>0\) for all \(x\in \mathcal{F}\), the causal variational principle on \(\sigma \)-locally compact spaces consists to minimize the causal action \(\mathcal{S}\) under variations of finite volume. The first main result of the paper considers a compact subset \(K\subset \mathcal{F}\) and a minimizing sequence \((\rho _{k})_{k\in \mathbb{N}}\) for the action \(\mathcal{S}_{K}\) in the space \(\mathfrak{M}_{K}\) of Borel measures on \(K\) which satisfy \(\rho (K)=1\). It proves the existence of a subsequence which converges weakly to a minimizer \(\rho _{K}\in \mathfrak{M} _{K}\). Then considering an exhaustion \((K_{n})_{n\in \mathbb{N}}\) of the \( \sigma \)-locally compact space \(\mathcal{F}\) by compact sets such that each compact set is contained in the interior of its successor and a corresponding minimizer \(\rho _{K_{n}}\in \mathfrak{M}_{K_{n}}\) obtained from the preceding result, the authors build a uniquely determined Radon measure \(\rho \) such that \(\int_{\mathcal{F}}fd\rho =\lim_{n\rightarrow \infty }\int_{\mathcal{F}}fd\rho _{K_{n}}\), for all \(f\in C_{c}(\mathcal{F})\) . If \(\mathcal{L}\) is continuous and of compact range, this measure \(\rho \) satisfies the Euler-Lagrange equations \(l\mid _{supp\rho }=\inf_{x\in \mathcal{F}}l(x)=0\), where \(l\in C(\mathcal{F})\) is defined by \(l(x)=\int_{ \mathcal{F}}\mathcal{L}(x,y)d\rho (y)-1\). This measure is also a minimizer of the action under variations of compact support, and a minimizer of the action under variations of finite volume under further assumptions. In the last section of his paper, the authors prove quite similar results for the measure \(\rho \) assuming that \(\mathcal{L}\) is continuous and decays in entropy.