Lower order terms of the discrete minimal Riesz energy on smooth closed curves (Q2880076)

This paper studies the problem of minimizing the energy of \(N\) repelling points on a curve in \(\mathbb{R}^d\) with the repelling potential \(|x-y|^{-s}\), where \(s\geq 1\) and \(|\cdot|\) is the Euclidean norm. \textit{A. Martinez-Finkelshtein} et al. [Can. J. Math. 56, No. 3, 529--552 (2004; Zbl 1073.31007)] found the first order term in the asymptotics of the minimal energy as \(N\to\infty\). In this paper the next order term is found under certain regularity assumptions. It is also proved that at least for \(s\geq2\) the minimal pairwise distance in optimal configurations asymtotically equals \(L/N\), where \(L\) is the length of the curve.