Constrained energy problems with applications to orthogonal polynomials of a discrete variable

Given a positive measure Σ with gs > 1, we write Με ℳ^Σ if Μ is a probability measure and Σ—Μ is a positive measure. Under some general assumptions on the constraining measure Σ and a weight functionw, we prove existence and uniqueness of a measure λ^Σ _w that minimizes the weighted logarithmic energy over the class ℳ^Σ. We also obtain a characterization theorem, a saturation result and a balayage representation for the measure λ^Σ _w As applications of our results, we determine the (normalized) limiting zero distribution for ray sequences of a class of orthogonal polynomials of a discrete variable. Explicit results are given for the class of Krawtchouk polynomials. The research done by this author is in partial fulfillment of the Ph.D. requirements at the University of South Florida. The research done by this author was supported, in part, by U.S. National Science Foundation under grant DMS-9501130.