Lower bounds for Riesz interaction functionals

Abstract

Motivated by the pressure formation problem for hydrodynamic models with nonlocal interactions, we classify strong Lebesgue lower bounds for the Riesz energy functional and for a determinant functional arising from the theory of compensated integrability. The classification covers all integrability exponents in $(0,\infty]$ within the class of confined log-concave densities. These geometric assumptions are motivated by counterexamples for general densities. On the whole space, neither functional controls any fixed Lebesgue quasi-norm. Under confinement, lower bounds fail for exponents greater than one, whereas $L^1$ bounds hold for the energy in every dimension and for the determinant only in dimension one. The log-concave estimates hold at sharp integrability exponents and follow from endpoint Lorentz bounds for confined quasiconcave densities and a weak-to-strong lemma. In particular, the energy estimates provide a geometric lower-bound counterpart to the classical Hardy-Littlewood-Sobolev inequality.