Absolute minima of potentials of certain regular spherical configurations (Q6093300)

The main result of this paper is the following: Let \(d,m \in\mathbb{N}\), \(m \geq 2\), and \(\omega_N = \{x_1,\dots,x_N\}\) be a point configuration on \(S^d\) whose index set \(\mathcal{I}_d (\omega_N)\) contains the numbers \(1, 2,\ldots, 2m - 3, 2m - 1, 2m\). Assume that numbers \(-1<t_1 <t_2 <\cdots<t_m <1\) are such that \[ \sum_{i=1}^m t_i < t_m/2\quad\text{and}\quad \sum_{i=1}^m t_i^2 - 2 \left(\sum_{i=1}^m\right)^2 < \frac{m(2m-1)}{4m+d-2} \] and that the set \(\mathcal{D}\) of points \(x^* \in S^d\) with \(\mathcal{D}(x^*,\omega_N) \subset \{t_1,\ldots,t_m\}\) is non-empty. Let \(f : [-1, 1] \to (-\infty, \infty]\) be a function continuous on \([-1, 1)\) with \(\lim\limits_{t\to1-} f (t) = f (1)\) and differentiable \(2m\) times in \((-1, 1)\) with non-negative derivatives \(f^{(2m-2)}\), \(f^{(2m-1)}\), and \(f^{(2 m)}\) on \((-1, 1)\). Then for every point \(x^* \in \mathcal{D}\), \[ \min\limits_{x\in S^d} \sum_{i=1}^N f(\mathbf{x}\cdot \mathbf{x}_i) = \sum_{i=1}^N f(\mathbf{x}^* \cdot \mathbf{x}_i).\tag{5} \] If, in addition, \(f^{(2 m)} > 0\) on \((-1,1)\), then the absolute minimum in (5) is achieved only at points of the set \(\mathcal D\). Several corollaries of the above results are also derived.