Collections.emptyList(),Collections.EMPTY, Collections.EMPTY_LIST, new ArrayList

Collections.EMPTY_LIST:

public class Collections {
    public static final List EMPTY_LIST = new EmptyList<>();
}

 private static class EmptyList<E>
        extends AbstractList<E>
        implements RandomAccess, Serializable {
        private static final long serialVersionUID = 8842843931221139166L;
......
}

Collections.emptyList():

Class Collections{
    public static final <T> List<T> emptyList() {
        return (List<T>) EMPTY_LIST;
    }
    public static final List EMPTY_LIST = new EmptyList<>();
}   

 private static class EmptyList<E>
        extends AbstractList<E>
        implements RandomAccess, Serializable {
        private static final long serialVersionUID = 8842843931221139166L;
......
}

ArrayList:

Class ArrayList{
        transient Object[] elementData;
        private static final Object[] DEFAULTCAPACITY_EMPTY_ELEMENTDATA = {};
        public ArrayList() {
            this.elementData = DEFAULTCAPACITY_EMPTY_ELEMENTDATA;
        }
}

小结：Collections.EMPTY和Collections.empty()都是空列表，并且是共用同一个，因为EMPTY_LIST是static修饰的(public static final List EMPTY_LIST = new EmptyList<>();)，区别是emptyList()可以通过泛型指定返回类型。而new ArrayList()，每次创建的对象都是不同的，所以相比而言会占用空间。