The Liquid Drop Model with a Yukawa Potential: Existence of Minimizers and Sharp Stability of the Ball

Abstract: We study a long-range perturbation of the perimeter functional by a nonlocal repulsive term defined through the Yukawa kernel, minimized under a volume constraint. Because the kernel decays exponentially, the competition between surface tension and repulsion is governed by two independent quantities, the screening rate and the volume. Specifically we prove that (i) above an explicit critical screening rate, minimizers exist at every volume, whereas earlier work required the volume to be large; (ii) below an explicit volume threshold minimizers exist for every screening rate; (iii) at small volume, and uniformly in the screening rate, the ball is the unique minimizer up to translation; and (iv) there exists a sharp volume threshold, depending on the screening rate, for the ball to be a stable volume-constrained critical point. The threshold is given in closed form for every screening rate and reduces to the known unscreened value when $α=0$. Our proofs overcome new technical changes due to the lack of homogeneity in the Yukawa kernel.