2016, Dipierro, Serena, Novaga, Matteo, Valdinoci, Enrico

We investigate the shape of critical points for a free energy consisting of a nonlocal perimeter plus a nonlocal repulsive term. In particular, we prove that a volume-constrained critical point is necessarily a ball if its volume is sufficiently small with respect to its isodiametric ratio, thus extending a result previously known only for global minimizers. We also show that, at least in one-dimension, there exist critical points with arbitrarily small volume and large isodiametric ratio. This example shows that a constraint on the diameter is, in general, necessary to establish the radial symmetry of the critical points.