Decoupling and Tail Laws for Small-Order Metric-Valued Nonlocal Energies: A Structural View of the Maz'ya--Shaposhnikova Formula

Abstract

We develop a measure-theoretic framework for small-order limits of nonlocal energies with metric-valued maps. For globally $L^p$ maps, we consider interaction measures whose marginals have uniformly bounded $L^{\infty }$ densities $a_{\alpha }$ and $b_{\alpha }$. If these densities converge weakly-* to $a_{\infty }$ and $b_{\infty }$, the normalized energies converge to the $L^p$ energy weighted by $a_{\infty }+b_{\infty }$ if and only if the interaction measures escape every bounded rectangle. For maps that are only locally $L^p$, we introduce target laws describing the distribution of the values sampled at infinity. Convergence of their $p$-distance profiles yields the limiting interaction energy for every $1\le p<\infty$ and arbitrary Polish targets, with integrated $p$-Wasserstein convergence as a sufficient criterion. The arguments include the endpoint $p=1$ and require no linear structure on the target space. Applications include directional and anisotropic Maz'ya--Shaposhnikova formulas, a Bernoulli-law interpretation of fractional perimeters, and an Abelian principle for heat-semigroup energies.