Non-Archimedean Coulomb Gases

Abstract

This article aims to study the Coulomb gas model over the $d$-dimensional $p$-adic space. We establish the existence of equilibria measures and the $\Gamma$-limit for the Coulomb energy functional when the number of configurations tends to infinity. For a cloud of charged particles confined into the unit ball, we compute the equilibrium measure and the minimum of its Coulomb energy functional. In the $p$-adic setting the Coulomb energy is the continuum limit of the minus a hierarchical Hamiltonian attached to a spin glass model with a $p$-adic coupling.