English

Sums of Squared Distances between Points on a Unit $n$-Sphere

Metric Geometry 2020-01-10 v1 History and Overview

Abstract

In this paper, we prove two theorems concerning the sums of squared distances between points on a unit nn-sphere that generalize two facts previously known about the case where the points are the vertices of a regular polygon. The first theorem is that, given a multiset of VV points on a unit nn-sphere, the sum of the squared distances between these points is V2(1d2)V^2 ( 1 - d^2 ) where dd is the distance between the centroid of the points and the center of the unit nn-sphere (for any n2n \geq 2). The second is that, given a finite set of points on the unit nn-sphere centered at the origin such that the point set is symmetric about the origin and the symmetry group of the point set acts transitively on the set, the sum of the squared distinct distances between these points is 2k+22k + 2 where kk is the number of distinct distances between the points (for any n2n \geq 2). Using the first theorem, we find a new way to calculate the potential energy function of a finite normalized frame.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2001.02745,
  title  = {Sums of Squared Distances between Points on a Unit $n$-Sphere},
  author = {Jessica N. Copher},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.02745},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

13 pages, 0 figures. The results in this article are significant generalizations of two of those in the author's paper arXiv:1903.06971

R2 v1 2026-06-23T13:06:25.836Z