We prove a conjecture of T. Erd{e}lyi and E.B. Saff, concerning the form of the dominant term (as $Nto infty$) of the $N$-point Riesz $d$-polarization constant for an infinite compact subset $A$ of a $d$-dimensional $C^{1}$-manifold embedded in $math
bb{R}^{m}$ ($dleq m$). Moreover, if we assume further that the $d$-dimensional Hausdorff measure of $A$ is positive, we show that any asymptotically optimal sequence of $N$-point configurations for the $N$-point $d$-polarization problem on $A$ is asymptotically uniformly distributed with respect to $mathcal H_d|_A$.
Let $A$ be a compact $d$-rectifiable set embedded in Euclidean space $RR^p$, $dle p$. For a given continuous distribution $sigma(x)$ with respect to $d$-dimensional Hausdorff measure on $A$, our earlier results provided a method for generating $N$-po
int configurations on $A$ that have asymptotic distribution $sigma (x)$ as $Nto infty$; moreover such configurations are quasi-uniform in the sense that the ratio of the covering radius to the separation distance is bounded independent of $N$. The method is based upon minimizing the energy of $N$ particles constrained to $A$ interacting via a weighted power law potential $w(x,y)|x-y|^{-s}$, where $s>d$ is a fixed parameter and $w(x,y)=left(sigma(x)sigma(y)right)^{-({s}/{2d})}$. Here we show that one can generate points on $A$ with the above mentioned properties keeping in the energy sums only those pairs of points that are located at a distance of at most $r_N=C_N N^{-1/d}$ from each other, with $C_N$ being a positive sequence tending to infinity arbitrarily slowly. To do this we minimize the energy with respect to a varying truncated weight $v_N(x,y)=Phi(left|x-yright|/r_N)w(x,y)$, where $Phi:(0,infty)to [0,infty)$ is a bounded function with $Phi(t)=0$, $tgeq 1$, and $lim_{tto 0^+}Phi(t)=1$. This reduces, under appropriate assumptions, the complexity of generating $N$ point `low energy discretizations to order $N C_N^d$ computations.
