The paper is concerned with the maximization of Laplace eigenvalues on surfaces of given volume with a Riemannian metric in a fixed conformal class. A significant progress on this problem has been recently achieved by Nadirashvili-Sire and Petrides using related, though different methods. In particular, it was shown that for a given $k$, the maximum of the $k$-th Laplace eigenvalue in a conformal class on a surface is either attained on a metric which is smooth except possibly at a finite number of conical singularities, or it is attained in the limit while a "bubble tree" is formed on a surface. Geometrically, the bubble tree appearing in this setting can be viewed as a union of touching identical round spheres. We present another proof of this statement, developing the approach proposed by the second author and Y. Sire. As a side result, we provide explicit upper bounds on the topological spectrum of surfaces.
In this paper we present an explicit construction for the fundamental solution to the Dirac and Laplace operator on some non-orientable conformally flat manifolds. We first treat a class of projective cylinders and tori where we can study monogenic sections with values in different pin bundles. Then we discuss the Möbius strip, the Klein bottle and higher dimensional generalizations of them. We present integral representation formulas together with some elementary tools of harmonic analysis on these manifolds.
We show that the number of entire maximal graphs with finitely many singular points that are conformally equivalent is a universal constant that depends only on the number of singularities, namely 2^$ for graphs with n+1 singularities. We also give an explicit description of the family of entire maximal graphs with a finite number of singularities all of them lying on a plane orthogonal to the limit normal vector at infinity.
The notion of maximal extension of a globally hyperbolic space-time arises from the notion of maximal solutions of the Cauchy problem associated to the Einstein's equations of general relativity. In 1969 Choquet-Bruhat and Geroch proved that if the Cauchy problem has a local solution, this solution has a unique maximal extension. Since the causal structure of a space-time is invariant under conformal changes of metrics we may generalize this notion of maximality to the conformal setting. In this article we focus on conformally flat space-times of dimension greater or equal than 3. In this case…
Motivated by considerations of euclidean quantum gravity, we investigate a central question of spectral geometry, namely the question of reconstructability of compact Riemannian manifolds from the spectra of their Laplace operators. To this end, we study analytic paths of metrics that induce isospectral Laplace-Beltrami operators over oriented compact surfaces without boundary. Applying perturbation theory, we show that sets of conformally equivalent metrics on such surfaces contain no nontrivial convex subsets. This indicates that cases where the manifolds cannot be reconstructed from their s…
The higher spin Laplace operator has been constructed recently as the generalization of the Laplacian in higher spin theory. This acts on functions taking values in arbitrary irreducible representations of the Spin group. In this paper, we first provide a decomposition of the higher spin Laplace operator in terms of Rrita-Schwinger operators. With such a decomposition, a connection between the fundamental solutions for the higher spin Laplace operator and the fundamental solutions for the Rarita-Schwinger operators is provided. Further, we show that the two components in this decomposition are…
We give a generalization of a theorem of Bôcher for the Laplace equation to a class of conformally invariant fully nonlinear degenerate elliptic equations. We also prove a Harnack inequality for locally Lipschitz viscosity solutions and a classification of continuous radially symmetric viscosity solutions.
For a finite reflection subgroup $G\leq O(n+1,1,\mR)$ of the conformal group of the sphere with standard conformal structure $(S^n,[g_0])$, we geometrically derive differential-difference Dunkl version of the series of conformally invariant differential operators with symbols given by powers of Laplace operator. The construction can be regarded as a deformation of the Fefferman-Graham ambient metric construction of GJMS operators.
In the present paper, we study sharp isoperimetric inequalities for the first Steklov eigenvalue $σ_1$ on surfaces with fixed genus and large number $k$ of boundary components. We show that as $k\to \infty$ the free boundary minimal surfaces in the unit ball arising from the maximization of $σ_1$ converge to a closed minimal surface in the boundary sphere arising from the maximization of the first Laplace eigenvalue on the corresponding closed surface. For some genera, we prove that the corresponding areas converge at the optimal rate $\frac{\log k}{k}$. This result appears to provide the firs…
It is natural to expect and simple to prove that every conformally flat space possess the maximal number of conformal Killing vector fields (CKVs). On the other hand, it is interesting to ask whether the converse is true. Is conformal flatness a necessary condition for the existence of the maximal number of CKVs? In this review article it is proven that the answer is yes, a space admits the maximal number of CKVs if, and only if, it is conformally flat.
We consider open manifolds which are interiors of a compact manifold with boundary, and Riemannian metrics asymptotic to a conformally cylindrical metric near the boundary. We show that the essential spectrum of the Laplace operator on functions vanishes under the presence of a magnetic field which does not define an integral relative cohomology class. It follows that the essential spectrum is not stable by perturbation even by a compactly supported magnetic field. We also treat magnetic operators perturbed with electric fields. In the same context we describe the essential spectrum of the $k$…
A conformal structure on a manifold $M^n$ induces natural second order conformally invariant operators, called Möbius and Laplace structures, acting on specific weight bundles of $M$, provided that $n\ge 3$. By extending the notions of Möbius and Laplace structures to the case of surfaces and curves, we develop here the theory of extrinsic conformal geometry for submanifolds, find tensorial invariants of a conformal embedding, and use these invariants to characterize various forms of geodesic submanifolds.
Let $(M,g)$ be a pseudo-Riemannian manifold and $F_λ(M)$ the space of densities of degree $λ$ on $M$. We study the space $D^2_{λ,μ}(M)$ of second-order differential operators from $F_λ(M)$ to $F_μ(M)$. If $(M,g)$ is conformally flat with signature $p-q$, then $D^2_{λ,μ}(M)$ is viewed as a module over the group of conformal transformations of $M$. We prove that, for almost all values of $μ-λ$, the $O(p+1,q+1)$-modules $D^2_{λ,μ}(M)$ and the space of symbols (i.e., of second-order polynomials on $T^*M$) are canonically isomorphic. This yields a conformally equivariant quantization for quadratic …
A non-degenerate second-order maximally conformally superintegrable system in dimension 2 naturally gives rise to a quadric with position dependent coefficients. It is shown how the system's Stäckel class can be obtained from this associated quadric.The Stäckel class of a second-order maximally conformally superintegrable system is its equivalence class under Stäckel transformations, i.e., under coupling-constant metamorphosis.
We prove stability estimates for the isoperimetric inequalities for the first and the second nonzero Laplace eigenvalues on surfaces, both globally and in a fixed conformal class. We employ the notion of eigenvalues of measures and show that if a normalized eigenvalue is close to its maximal value, the corresponding measure must be close in the Sobolev space $W^{-1,2}$ to the set of maximizing measures. In particular, this implies a qualitative stability result: metrics almost maximizing the normalized eigenvalue must be $W^{-1,2}$-close to a maximal metric. Following this approach, we prove s…
Consider a smooth closed surface $M$ of fixed genus $\geqslant 2$ with a hyperbolic metric $σ$ of total area $A$. In this article, we study the behavior of geometric and dynamical characteristics (e.g., diameter, Laplace spectrum, Gaussian curvature and entropies) of nonpositively curved smooth metrics with total area $A$ conformally equivalent to $σ$. For such metrics, we show that the diameter is bounded above and the Laplace spectrum is bounded below away from zero by constants which depend on $σ$. On the other hand, we prove that the metric entropy of the geodesic flow with respect to the …
Inspired by the role geometric structures play in our understanding of surfaces and three-manifolds, and Berger's observation that a surface of constant sectional curvature is determined up to local isometry by its Laplace spectrum, we explore the extent to which compact locally homogeneous three-manifolds are characterized up to local isometry by their spectra. We observe that there are eight `metrically maximal' three-dimensional geometries on which all compact locally homogeneous three-manifolds are modeled and we demonstrate that for five of these geometries the associated compact locally …
Let N be a complete Riemannian manifold of dimension n+1 whose Riemannian metric g is conformally equivalent to a metric with non-negative Ricci curvature. The normalized Steklov eigenvalues of a bounded domain in N are bounded above in terms of the isoperimetric ratio of the domain. Consequently, the normalized Steklov eigenvalues of a bounded domain in Euclidean space, hyperbolic space or a standard hemisphere are uniformly bounded above. On a compact surface with boundary, the normalized Steklov eigenvalues are uniformly bounded above in terms of the genus. We also obtain a relationship bet…
The topology of closed manifolds forces interacting charges to appear in pairs. We take advantage of this property in the setting of the conformal boundary of $\mathrm{AdS}_5$ spacetime, topologically equivalent to the closed manifold $S^1\times S^3$, by considering the coupling of two massless opposite charges on it. Taking the interaction potential as the analog of Coulomb interaction (derived from a fundamental solution of the $S^3$ Laplace-Beltrami operator), a conformal $S^1\times S^3$ metric deformation is proposed, such that free motion on the deformed metric is equivalent to motion on …
In many problems of PDE involving the Laplace-Beltrami operator on manifolds with ends, it is often useful to introduce radial or geodesic normal coordinates near infinity. In this paper, we prove the existence of such coordinates for a general class of manifolds with ends, which contains asymptotically conical and hyperbolic manifolds. We study the decay rate to the metric at infinity associated to radial coordinates and also show that the latter metric is always conformally equivalent to the metric at infinity associated to the original coordinate system. We finally give several examples ill…
For a compact Riemannian $n$-manifold $(M,g)$ of positive scalar curvature, the capital $\Ein$ invariant of $g$ is defined to be the infinimum over $M$ of the quotient of the scalar curvature by the maximal eigenvalue of the Ricci curvature. This is a re-scale invariant and belongs to the interval $(0,n]$. For a positive conformal class $[g]$, we define the conformal invariant $\Ein([g]):=\sup\{\Ein(g): g\in [g]\}$. In this paper, we prove vanihing theorems for Betti numbers and for the higher homotopy groups of $M$ under optimal lower bounds on $\Ein([g])$ assuming that $g$ is locally conform…
We study the conformal plate buckling equation (Laplace--Beltrami)^2 u =1, where the L-B operator is for the metric g = e^{2u}g_0, with $g_0$ the standard Euclidean metric on R^2. This conformal elliptic PDE of fourth order is equivalent to the nonlinear system of elliptic PDEs of second order, Delta u +K_g e^(2u)=0, Delta K_g + e^(2u)=0, with x in R^2, describing a conformally flat surface with a Gauss curvature function K_g that is generated self-consistently through the metric's conformal factor.
