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Let be a form as in §4 with . As in the complex case, it turns out that the non-Archimedean Monge-Ampère operator admits a primitive, i.e. a functional whose directional derivatives at a given are given by integration against . Adapting [GZ07, BEGZ10] to our case we introduce and study this functional, as well as the resulting class of -psh functions of finite energy.
While such functions are unbounded in general, they
behave from many points of view like bounded -psh functions.
6.1. Energy of model functions
For any model function we set
(6.1)
and call the energy of .
It follows formally from an integration by parts argument,
see Proposition 2.20 and [Tia00, Lemma 6.2] that if
are any two model functions, then
(6.2)
Writing , and expanding in
leads to the following formulas for first and second derivatives of :
(6.3)
(6.4)
Proposition 6.1.
The restriction of to the convex set
is concave, nondecreasing, and satisfies for any constant .
Proof.
Concavity follows from (6.4) and Proposition 2.21.
Monotonicity is a consequence of (6.3),
and the last equation follows from (6.2) since
is a probability measure for each thanks to Proposition 2.19 and the normalization .
∎
6.2. Energy of -psh functions
For a general -psh function we set
Proposition 6.2.
The extension
is non-decreasing, concave, and satisfies for any . It is also upper semicontinuous, and continuous along decreasing nets
Proof.
That is nondecreasing, concave and satisfies
follows formally from Proposition 6.1 (using that is convex and invariant under addition of a constant).
Upper semicontinuity is also a direct consequence of these algebraic properties of and of Theorem 2.10. Indeed, pick and
such that . We need to show that
for in a neighborhood of
in . By definition, there exists
such that
and for some . By Theorem 2.10,
is an open neighborhood of in . By (6.2) we have for all , which proves upper semicontinuity.
Finally, being usc and nondecreasing, is automatically
continuous along decreasing nets.
∎
Proposition 6.3.
Formulas (6.1)-(6.4)
are valid for bounded -psh functions.
This follows from the continuity of along decreasing nets
and from Theorem 3.1.
6.3. Non-pluripolar Monge-Ampère measures
Let us introduce the class of -psh functions with finite energy
This is a convex set which contains all bounded -psh functions.
In this section and its sequel, we explain how to extend the Monge-Ampère operator to and prove that its basic properties continue to hold
in this more general setting.
Consider an arbitrary -psh function .
In the sequel we shall use the notation
[BT87, GZ07]
The non-pluripolar Monge-Ampère measure
of any -psh function
is the increasing limit of the measures
as .
Here the limit exists in a very strong sense: we have
(6.5)
for any Borel set .
Remark 6.5.
The terminology ”non-pluripolar” comes from the fact that does not put mass on pluripolar sets. This in turn follows from Proposition 3.7 applied to the bounded -psh function and from (6.5).
The measure is always defined and
supported on the set , but its
total mass may be strictly less than one.
Definition 6.6.
A -psh function
has full Monge-Ampère mass when is a probability measure.
This is the case iff
as ,
and implies that converges weakly to
.
Lemma 6.7.
If , then as
; hence has full Monge-Ampère mass.
Proof.
We may assume . Set . Since (6.2) applies to bounded -psh functions by Proposition 6.3, we get
where . Since
by the continuity of along decreasing sequences, the proof is complete.
∎
Lemma 6.8.
If and ,
then
for any .
Proof.
We may assume .
Pick . The probability measures
and agree on .
Hence
The result follows by letting .
∎
Proposition 6.9.
If and is a decreasing net
of -psh functions converging to ,
then for all and
as
in the weak sense of measures.
Proof.
Given , we have by definition that
as
and
as
for every . Moreover, Lemma 6.8 shows
that the latter convergence is uniform in .
Since for each we have
as by Theorem 3.1,
the result follows.
∎
Lemma 6.10.
If and , then we have the estimate
Proof.
Pick . Since (6.1) holds for bounded
-psh functions, we see using (3.1) that
Since decreases to at any point of , the right hand side converges to
by monotone convergence. We obtain the desired
estimate by letting .
∎
6.4. Locality and the comparison principle
Proposition 6.11.
For any , we have
(6.6)
and the comparison principle holds:
(6.7)
Proof.
To prove (6.6), first assume , where .
Pick so that
,
, and
where the second equality follows from Theorem 5.1.
As ,
for any Borel set , so the right hand side of the equation
above converges to .
Now consider and set .
Then
•
since ;
•
by (5.1) applied
to and , noticing the inclusion ;
•
by the previous step and the inclusion
.
To summarize, we get
(6.8)
Now
As the first term tends to since puts no mass on the pluripolar set (see Remark 6.5), and the second term converges to .
Thus the left-hand side of (6.8) tends to
as . Similarly, the right-hand side
tends to .
Finally the comparison principle follows exactly as in the proof of Corollary 5.3. The proof is complete.
∎
6.5. Differentiability
Proposition 6.12.
For any , the function
is differentiable on , and
we have
(6.9)
for any .
Proof.
Set for .
Note that
is a polynomial of degree at most when and are model functions.
By continuity of the energy along decreasing nets, the same is true in general.
In particular, is differentiable on .
Pick any decreasing sequence of
-psh model functions converging to .
Note that as polynomials
when and , hence
.
Since (6.9) holds true for bounded functions
by Proposition 6.3, it suffices to show
First, we have
by (6.6). By Lemma 6.7 the first term
of the right hand side tends to , and the second term
converges to since puts no mass on .
Second, for fixed we have
since is continuous.
Finally, Lemma 2.23 yields
,
completing the proof.
∎