  In this paper we introduce several extremal sequences of points on locally
compact metric spaces and study their asymptotic properties. These sequences
are defined through a greedy algorithm by minimizing a certain energy
functional whose expression involves an external field. Some results are also
obtained in the context of Euclidian spaces $\mathbb{R}^{p}$, $p\geq 2$. As a
particular example, given a closed set $A\subset\mathbb{R}^{p}$, a lower
semicontinuous function $f:\mathbb{R}^p\to(-\infty,+\infty]$ and an integer
$m\geq 2$, we investigate (under suitable conditions on $A$ and $f$) sequences
$\{a_{i}\}_{1}^{\infty}\subset A$ that are constructed inductively by selecting
the first $m$ points $a_{1},...,a_{m}$ so that the functional \[ \sum_{1\leq
i<j\leq m}\frac{1}{|x_{i}-x_{j}|^{s}}+(m-1)\sum_{i=1}^{m}f(x_{i}) \] attains
its minimum on $A^{m}$ for $x_{i}=a_{i}$, $1\leq i\leq m$, and for every
integer $N\geq 1$, the points $a_{mN+1},...,a_{m(N+1)}$ are chosen to minimize
the expression \[ \sum_{i=1}^{m}\sum_{l=1}^{mN}\frac{1}{|x_{i}-a_{l}|^{s}}
+\sum_{1\leq i<j\leq
m}\frac{1}{|x_{i}-x_{j}|^{s}}+((N+1)m-1)\sum_{i=1}^{m}f(x_{i}) \] on $A^{m}$.
We assume here that $s\in[p-2,p)$. An extension of a result due to G. Choquet
concerning point configurations with minimal energy is also obtained and
constitutes a key ingredient in our analysis.
