On extremums of sums of powered distances to a finite set of points (Q387589)

The locus of all points, for which the squared distances to a given collection of points in the plane sum up to a given number, is a circle. The authors study what happens to this obvious fact if the dimension of the space is arbitrary, the distances are raised to an arbitrary real power, but the collection of points is as simple as possible (the vertices of a regular polygon, a regular 3-dimensional polytope, a regular simplex, a cube or a cross-polytope). More specifically, the authors study the extrema of the sum of the powered distances to the vertices of such a polytope, considered as a function on a sphere concentric to the polytope. The extrema are completely described for all of the aforementioned polytopes, except for the dodecahedron and the icosahedron. In particular, the paper contains the list of all cases, in which the sum of the powered distances is the constant on the sphere. For the dodecahedron and the icosahedron, the list of such cases is only estimated from above and from below.