Given a Laplace eigenfunction on a surface, we study the distribution of its extrema on the nodal domains. It is classically known that the absolute value of the eigenfunction is asymptotically bounded by the 4-th root of the eigenvalue. It turns out that the number of nodal domains where the eigenfunction has an extremum of such order, remains bounded as the eigenvalue tends to infinity.
We also observe that certain restrictions on the distribution of nodal extrema and a version of the Courant nodal domain theorem are valid for a rather wide class of functions on surfaces. These restrictions follow from a bound in the spirit of Kronrod and Yomdin on the average number of connected components of level sets.
We investigate the geometric properties of Steklov eigenfunctions in smooth manifolds. We derive the refined doubling estimates and Bernstein's inequalities. For the real analytic manifolds, we are able to obtain the sharp upper bound for the measure of interior nodal sets.
Let X be a manifold equipped with a complete Riemannian metric of constant negative curvature and finite volume. We demonstrate the finiteness of the collection of totally geodesic immersed hypersurfaces in X that lie in the zero-level set of some Laplace eigenfunction. For surfaces, we show that the number can be bounded just in terms of the area of the surface. We also provide constructions of geodesics in hyperbolic surfaces that lie in a nodal set but that do not lie in the fixed point set of a reflection symmetry.
We estimate the volume of superlevel sets of Laplace-Beltrami eigenfunctions on a compact Riemannian manifold. The proof uses the Green's function representation and the Bathtub principle. As an application, we obtain upper bounds on the distribution of the extrema of a Laplace-Beltrami eigenfunction over its nodal domains. Such bounds have been previously proved by L. Polterovich and M. Sodin in the case of compact surfaces. Our techniques allow to generalize these results to arbitrary dimensions. We also discuss a different approach to the problem based on reverse Hölder inequalities due to …
In the 3-dimensional Riemannian geometry, contact structures equipped with an adapted Riemannian metric are divergence-free, nondegenerate eigenforms of the Laplace-Beltrami operator. We trace out a 2-d analogue of this fact: there is a close relationship between the topology of the contact structure on a convex surface in the 3-manifold (the dividing curves) and the nodal curves of Laplacian eigenfunctions on that surface. Motivated by this relationship, we consider a topological version of Payne's conjecture for the free membrane problem. We construct counterexamples to Payne's conjecture fo…
We use a modified Bochner technique to derive an inequality relating the nodal set of eigenspinors to eigenvalues of the Dirac operator on closed surfaces. In addition, we apply this technique to solutions of similar spinorial equations.
On convex co-compact hyperbolic surfaces with Hausdorff dimension of the limit set less than 1/2, we investigate high energy behaviour of Eisenstein Series. Eisenstein Series are non-L^2 eigenfunctions of the hyperbolic Laplacian which parametrize the continous spectrum. We prove an equidistribution result for restrictions to geodesics segments and use it to obtain optimal lower and upper bounds for the number of intersections of nodal lines with a fixed geodesic segment as the frequency goes to infinity. Upper bounds on the number of nodal domains are also derived.
We investigate the interior nodal sets $\mathcal{N}_λ$ of Steklov eigenfunctions on connected and compact surfaces with boundary. The optimal vanishing order of Steklov eigenfunctions is shown be $Cλ$. The singular sets $\mathcal{S}_λ$ are finite points on the nodal sets. We are able to prove that the Hausdorff measure $H^0(\mathcal{S}_λ)\leq Cλ^2$. Furthermore, we obtain an upper bound for the measure of interior nodal sets $H^1(\mathcal{N}_λ)\leq Cλ^{\frac{3}{2}}$. Here those positive constants $C$ depend only on the surfaces.
We prove sharp upper and lower bounds for the nodal length of Steklov eigenfunctions on real-analytic Riemannian surfaces with boundary. The argument involves frequency function methods for harmonic functions in the interior of the surface as well as the construction of exponentially accurate approximations for the Steklov eigenfunctions near the boundary.
We give an example of a domain in dimension $N \geq 3$, homeomorphic to a ball and with analytic boundary, for which the second eigenvalue of the Dirichlet Laplacian has an eigenfunction with a closed nodal surface. The domain is constructed via a sequence of perturbations of the domain of S. Fournais [J. Differential Equations \textbf{173} (2001), 145-159].
Let $(M,g)$ be a smooth compact Riemannian surface with no boundary. Given a smooth vector field $V$ with finitely many zeroes on $M$, we study the distribution of the number of tangencies to $V$ of the nodal components of random band-limited functions. It is determined that in the high-energy limit, these obey a universal deterministic law, independent of the surface $M$ and the vector field $V$, that is supported precisely on the even integers $2 \mathbb{Z}_{> 0}$.
In a recent paper, we exhibit a link between the average local growth of Laplace eigenfunctions on surfaces and the size of their nodal set. In that paper, the average local growth is computed using the uniform - or $L^\infty$ - growth exponents on disks of wavelength radius. The purpose of this note is to prove similar results for a broader class of $L^q$ growth exponents with $q \in (1, \infty)$. More precisely, we show that the size of the nodal set is bounded above and below by the product of the average local $L^q$ growth with the frequency. We briefly discuss the relation between this ne…
We consider the the intersections of the complex nodal set of the analytic continuation of an eigenfunction of the Laplacian on a real analytic surface with the complexification of a geodesic. We prove that if the geodesic flow is ergodic and if the geodesic is periodic and satisfies a generic asymmetry condition, then the intersection points condense along the real geodesic and become uniformly distributed with respect to its arc-length. We prove an analogous result for non-periodic geodesics except that the `origin' is allowed to move with $λ_j$. The proof uses the quantum ergodic restrictio…
We prove two types of nodal results for density one subsequences of an orthonormal basis $\{ϕ_j\}$ of eigenfunctions of the Laplacian on a negatively curved compact surface. The first type of result involves the intersections $Z_{ϕ_j} \cap H$ of the nodal set $Z_{ϕ_j}$ of $ϕ_j$ with a smooth curve $H$. Using recent results on quantum ergodic restriction theorems and prior results on periods of eigenfunctions over curves, we prove that under an asymmetry assumption on $H$, the number of intersection points tends to infinity for a density one subsequence of the $ϕ_j$. . We also prove that the nu…
Let $H(\Om_0)=-Δ+V$ be a Schrödinger operator on a bounded domain $\Om_0\subset \mathbb R^d$ with Dirichlet boundary conditions. Suppose that the $\Om_\ell$ ($\ell \in \{1,...,k\}$) are some pairwise disjoint subsets of $\Om_0$ and that $H(\Om_\ell)$ are the corresponding Schrödinger operators again with Dirichlet boundary conditions. We investigate the relations between the spectrum of $H(\Om_0)$ and the spectra of the $H(\Om_\ell)$. In particular, we derive some inequalities for the associated spectral counting functions which can be interpreted as generalizations of Courant's nodal Theorem.…
We prove a result, announced by F. Nazarov, L. Polterovich and M. Sodin that exhibits a relation between the average local growth of a Laplace eigenfunction on a closed surface and the global size of its nodal set. More precisely, we provide a lower and an upper bound to the Hausdorff measure of the nodal set in terms of the expected value of the growth exponent of an eigenfunction on disks of wavelength like radius. Combined with Yau's conjecture, the result implies that the average local growth of an eigenfunction on such disks is bounded by constants in the semi-classical limit. We also obt…
We prove two mixed versions of the Discrete Nodal Theorem of Davies et. al. [3] for bounded degree graphs, and for three-connected graphs of fixed genus $g$. Using this we can show that for a three-connected graph satisfying a certain volume-growth condition, the multiplicity of the $n$th Laplacian eigenvalue is at most $2\left[ 6(n-1) + 15(2g-2) \right]^2$. Our results hold for any Schrödinger operator, not just the Laplacian.
It is an open problem in general to prove that there exists a sequence of $Δ_g$-eigenfunctions $ϕ_{j_k}$ on a Riemannian manifold $(M, g)$ for which the number $N(ϕ_{j_k}) $ of nodal domains tends to infinity with the eigenvalue. Our main result is that $N(ϕ_{j_k}) \to \infty$ along a subsequence of eigenvalues of density $1$ if the $(M, g)$ is a non-positively curved surface with concave boundary, i.e. a generalized Sinai or Lorentz billiard. Unlike the recent closely related work of Ghosh-Reznikov-Sarnak and of the authors on the nodal domain counting problem, the surfaces need not have any …
We extend some classical inequalities between the Dirichlet and Neumann eigenvalues of the Laplacian to the context of mixed Steklov--Dirichlet and Steklov--Neumann eigenvalue problems. The latter one is also known as the sloshing problem, and has been actively studied for more than a century due to its importance in hydrodynamics. The main results of the paper are applied to obtain certain geometric information about nodal sets of sloshing eigenfunctions. The key ideas of the proofs include domain monotonicity for eigenvalues of mixed Steklov problems, as well as an adaptation of Filonov's me…
We build a one-parameter family of S^{1}-invariant metrics on the unit disc with fixed total area for which the second eigenvalue of the Laplace operator in the case of both Neumann and Dirichlet boundary conditions is simple and has an eigenfunction with a closed nodal line. In the case of Neumann boundary conditions, we also prove that this eigenfunction attains its maximum at an interior point, and thus provide a counterexample to the hot spots conjecture on a simply connected surface. This is a consequence of the stronger result that within this family of metrics any given (finite) number …
