On Constrained Riesz Minimum Energy Problems

Abstract

The constrained equilibrium problem for the logarithmic potential was introduced by Rakhmanov (1996) as he realized that the asymptotic distribution of the zeros of discrete orthogonal polynomials in a compact interval could be described in terms of the equilibrium measure of this interval in a class of measures subject to a certain constraint. Other authors such as Dragnev and Saff (1997), and Kuijlaars and Van Assche (1999), extended this approach to more general settings. These problems have proven to be useful for describing asymptotic distributions in different settings. In the current paper, we consider constrained equilibrium problems in the Riesz setting, that is, for $s$-Riesz potentials in the hyperplane $\mathbb{R}^d,$ with $d\geq 1$ and $\max (0,d-2) < s < d$. Along with some general results, an illustrative example consisting of the solution of a constrained equilibrium problem in the unit ball is studied in detail. This is the main part of the paper. Finally, a number of numerical experiments show how the constrained equilibrium measure, the solution of the problem, may be discretized using the so-called &#39;constrained Leja points&#39; introduced by Coroian and Dragnev (2001).