Electrostatic computations for statistical mechanics and random matrix applications

Abstract

Although for the most part classical, the topic of electrostatics finds to this day new applications. In this review we highlight several theoretical results on electrostatics, chosen to both illustrate general principles, and for their application in statistical mechanics and random matrix settings. The theoretical results include electrostatic potentials and energies associated with balls and hyperellipsoids in general dimension, equilibrium measures associated with surfaces of the latter, the use of conformal mappings in two-dimensions, and the balayage measure. A number of explicit examples of their use in predicting the leading asymptotic form of certain configuration integrals and particle density in particular statistical mechanical systems are given, as well as with regards to questions relating to fluctuation formulas and (conditioned) gap probabilities.