Optimizers of three-point energies and nearly orthogonal sets

This paper is devoted to spherical measures and point configurations optimizing three-point energies. Our main goal is to extend the classic optimization problems based on pairs of distances between points to the context of three-point potentials. In particular, we study three-point analogues of the sphere packing problem and the optimization problem for $p$-frame energies based on three points. It turns out that both problems are inherently connected to the problem of nearly orthogonal sets by Erd\H{o}s. As the outcome, we provide a new solution of the Erd\H{o}s problem from the three-point packing perspective. We also show that the orthogonal basis uniquely minimizes the $p$-frame three-point energy when $0<p<1$ in all dimensions. The arguments make use of multivariate polynomials employed in semidefinite programming and based on the classical Gegenbauer polynomials. For $p=1$, we completely solve the analogous problem on the circle. As for higher dimensions, we show that the Hausdorff dimension of minimizers is not greater than $d-2$ for measures on $\mathbb{S}^{d-1}$. As the main ingredient of our proof, we show that the only isotropic measure without obtuse angles is the uniform distribution over an orthonormal basis.