Upper bounds for the number of isolated critical points via Thom-Milnor theorem

Abstract

We apply the Thom-Milnor theorem to obtain the upper bounds on the amount of isolated (1) critical points of a potential generated by several fixed point charges(Maxwell's problem on point charges), (2) critical points of SINR, (3) critical points of a potential generated by several fixed Newtonian point masses augmented with a quadratic term, (4) central configurations in the $n$-body problem. In particular, we get an exponential bound for Maxwell's problem and the polynomial bound for the case of an "even dimensional" potential in Maxwell's problem.