{"paper":{"title":"Mystery of point charges","license":"","headline":"","cross_cats":["math.MP"],"primary_cat":"math-ph","authors_text":"Andrei Gabrielov (Purdue University), Boris Shapiro (University of Stockholm), Dmitry Novikov (Cornell University)","submitted_at":"2004-09-03T16:23:39Z","abstract_excerpt":"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."},"claims":{"count":0,"items":[],"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"source":{"id":"math-ph/0409009","kind":"arxiv","version":1},"verdict":{"id":null,"model_set":{},"created_at":null,"strongest_claim":"","one_line_summary":"","pipeline_version":null,"weakest_assumption":"","pith_extraction_headline":""},"integrity":{"clean":true,"summary":{"advisory":0,"critical":0,"by_detector":{},"informational":0},"endpoint":"/pith/math-ph/0409009/integrity.json","findings":[],"available":true,"detectors_run":[],"snapshot_sha256":"c28c3603d3b5d939e8dc4c7e95fa8dfce3d595e45f758748cecf8e644a296938"},"references":{"count":0,"sample":[],"resolved_work":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57","internal_anchors":0},"formal_canon":{"evidence_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"author_claims":{"count":0,"strong_count":0,"snapshot_sha256":"258153158e38e3291e3d48162225fcdb2d5a3ed65a07baac614ab91432fd4f57"},"builder_version":"pith-number-builder-2026-05-17-v1"}