Rapid Solution of Minimal Riesz Energy Problems

In , , we compute the solution to both the unconstrained and constrained Gauss variational problem, considered for the Riesz kernel of order and a pair of compact, disjoint, boundaryless ‐dimensional ‐manifolds , , where , each being charged with Borel measures with the sign prescribed. Such variational problems over a cone of Borel measures can be formulated as minimization problems over the corresponding cone of surface distributions belonging to the Sobolev–Slobodetski space , where and (see Harbrecht et al., Math. Nachr. 287 (2014), 48–69). We thus approximate the sought density by piecewise constant boundary elements and apply the primal‐dual active set strategy to impose the desired inequality constraints. The boundary integral operator which is defined by the Riesz kernel under consideration is efficiently approximated by means of an ‐matrix approximation. This particularly enables the application of a preconditioner for the iterative solution of the first‐order optimality system. Numerical results in are given to demonstrate our approach. © 2016Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Numer Methods Partial Differential Eq 32: 1535–1552, 2016