Points on $\operatorname{SO}(3)$ with low logarithmic energy

Abstract: We describe several randomized collections of $3\times 3$ rotation matrices and analyze their associated logarithmic energy. The best one (i.e. the one attaining the lowest expected logarithmic energy) is constructed by choosing $r$ spherical points, which come from the zeros of a randomly chosen degree $r$ polynomial, and considering at each of these points a set of $s$ evenly distributed rotation matrices. This construction yields a new upper bound on the minimal logarithmic energy of $n=rs$ rotation matrices.