Condenser energy under holomorphic motions (Q351829)

A condenser in the extended complex plane \(\widehat{\mathbb C}\) is a set \(D\setminus K\), where \(D\) is a domain and \(K\) is a compact subset of \(D\) such that \(D\setminus K\) is connected. The compact sets \(\widehat{\mathbb C}\setminus D\) and \(K\) are the plates of the condenser. Let \(u\) be the solution of the generalized Dirichlet problem on \(D\setminus K\) with boundary values \(0\) on \(\partial D\) and \(1\) on \(\partial K\). The equilibrium energy of the condenser is given by \[ \text{md}(D\setminus K)=2\pi\left (\int_{D\setminus K}|\nabla u|^2\right )^{-1}. \] The author studies the behavior of the equilibrium energy when one of the plates moves under a holomorphic motion \(f_\lambda(z)\) (namely a function holomorphic in \(\lambda\) and injective in \(z\)). The main result is that the function \(\lambda\mapsto \text{md}(f_\lambda(D)\setminus K)\) is superharmonic. Moreover, a characterization of the case of harmonicity is given. In the case where the holomorphic motion is a dilation (\(f_\lambda(z)=\lambda z\)), the author proves that harmonicity occurs if and only if the condenser is essentially an annulus centered at the origin.