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arxiv: math-ph/0409009 · v1 · pith:EVX3MUW7new · submitted 2004-09-03 · 🧮 math-ph · math.MP

Mystery of point charges

classification 🧮 math-ph math.MP
keywords chargesbounduppergivennumberpointasymptoticallyback
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We discuss the problem of finding an upper bound for the number of equilibrium points of a potential of several fixed point charges in R^n. This question goes back to J.C.Maxwell and M.Morse. Using fewnomial theory we show that for a given number of charges there exists an upper bound independent on the dimension, and show it to be 12 for three charges. We conjecture the exact upper bound for a given configuration of nonnegative charges in terms of its Voronoi diagram, and prove it asymptotically.

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