An improved geometric inequality via vanishing moments, with applications to singular Liouville equations (Q358352)

The very interesting paper under review deals with the singular Liouville type equations of the form \[ -\Delta_gu=\rho\left( {{h(x)e^{2u}}\over{\int_\Sigma h(x)e^{2u} dV_g}}-a(x)\right)-2\pi\sum_{j=1}^m \alpha_j \left(\delta_{p_j}-{1\over {|\Sigma|}}\right),\quad \int_\Sigma a(x)dV_g=1 \] on a compact orientable surface \((\Sigma,g)\) without boundary and with metric \(g\). The study is motivated by the study of Electroweak and Self-Dual Chern-Simons theories, the Gaussian curvature prescription with conical singularities and the Onsager description of turbulence. In the above equation \(\rho\) is a positive parameter, \(a,h:\;\Sigma \to \mathbb R\) are smooth functions, \(h(x)>0\) for each \(x\in \Sigma,\) \(p_j\in\Sigma\) and \(|\Sigma|\) stands for the area \(\int_\Sigma dV_g\) of \(\Sigma.\) The authors analyse variationally the problem of existence of solutions and show how the angular distribution of the conformal volume near the singularities may lead to improvements in the Moser-Trudinger inequality, and this way to lower bounds for the Euler-Lagrange functional. Moreover, the sharpness of the hypotheses imposed is shown by discussing some non-existence results.