  The purpose of this paper is to set out optimal gradient estimates for
solutions to the isotropic conductivity problem in the presence of adjacent
conductivity inclusions as the distance between the inclusions goes to zero and
their conductivities degenerate. This difficult question arises in the study of
composite media. Frequently in composites, the inclusions are very closely
spaced and may even touch. It is quite important from a practical point of view
to know whether the electric field (the gradient of the potential) can be
arbitrarily large as the inclusions get closer to each other or to the boundary
of the background medium.
  In this paper, we establish both upper and lower bounds on the electric field
in the case where two circular conductivity inclusions are very close but not
touching. We also obtain such bounds when a circular inclusion is very close to
the boundary of a circular domain which contains the inclusion. The novelty of
these estimates, which improve and make complete our earlier results published
in Math. Ann., is that they give an optimal information about the blow-up of
the electric field as the conductivities of the inclusions degenerate.
