Unconstrained polarization (Chebyshev) problems: basic properties and Riesz kernel asymptotics

DOI10.1007/S11118-020-09875-ZMaRDI QIDQ2072147zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Mircea Petrache, D. P. Hardin, E. B. Saff

Publication date 26 January 2022

Published in Potential Analysis (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.08497

Chebyshev constant maximal Riesz polarization Riesz potential unconstrained polarization

Potentials and capacities, extremal length and related notions in higher dimensions (31B15) Harmonic, subharmonic, superharmonic functions on other spaces (31C05) Potentials and capacities on other spaces (31C15)

Abstract: We introduce and study the unconstrained polarization (or Chebyshev) problem which requires to find an

N

-point configuration that maximizes the minimum value of its potential over a set

A

in

p

-dimensional Euclidean space. This problem is compared to the constrained problem in which the points are required to belong to the set

A

. We find that for Riesz kernels

1 / | x - y |^{s}

with

s > p - 2

the optimum unconstrained configurations concentrate close to the set

A

and based on this fundamental fact we recover the same asymptotic value of the polarization as for the more classical constrained problem on a class of

d

-rectifiable sets. We also investigate the new unconstrained problem in special cases such as for spheres and balls. In the last section we formulate some natural open problems and conjectures.

Review text

Let \[ K_s(x,y)=|x-y|^{-s},\;\;\;x,y\in \mathbb R^p,\;s>0, \] be the Riesz kernel. Supose that \(A\subset \mathbb R^p\). The authors consider the max-min optimization problem \[ P_s(A,\omega_N)=\inf_{y\in A}\sum_{i=1}^N K_s(x_i,y),\;\;\mathcal{P}_s^*(A,N)= \sup_{\omega_N\subset \mathbb R^p} P_s(A,\omega_N), \] where \(\omega_N\) is a list of \(N\) points in \(\mathbb R^p\) (repetition is allowed). This is an unconstrained polarization problem (in the sense that we do not demand that \(\omega_N\subset A\)). Among the main results of the article are the following: 1. Suppose that \(\omega_N^*\) is a maximal configuration and \(s>p-2\), \(p\geq 2\). The authors give an upper bound for the number of points in \(\omega_N^*\) that do not lie in an \(\varepsilon\)-neighborhood of \(A\). 2. Under regularity assumptions on \(A\), the limiting behavior of \(\mathcal{P}_s^*(A,N)\), as \(N\to \infty\), is studied in detail. Related estimates involving the size (e.g., Minkowski content) are proved. 3. Several results are proved for the important special case when \(A\) is the \((p-1)\)-dimensional sphere. \par The article contains many more results and studies more general kernels. It also contains several open problems.

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