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Critical points of second Neumann eigenfunctions on some convex domains in two-dimensional space forms

Analysis of PDEs 2026-07-20 v1

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate critical points of second Neumann eigenfunctions on convex domains in the two-dimensional space forms. We approach this problem from three complementary perspectives: spectral and geometric conditions; explicit quantitative location restrictions; the hot spots constant. Precisely, for the spectral and geometric conditions, we prove that if a convex domain Ω\Omega is contained in the hemisphere and satisfies μ2(Ω)2\mu_{2}(\Omega)\leq 2, then its second Neumann eigenfunction has no interior critical points. Beyond this, we establish a unified diameter-based criterion μ2(Ω)D2j1,12\mu_2(\Omega)D^2\leq j_{1,1}^2 ensuring the absence of interior critical points in S2\mathbb{S}^{2} and H2\mathbb{H}^{2}. Moreover, when interior critical points may exist, we derive explicit quantitative location restrictions in terms of the domain's diameter in S2\mathbb{S}^{2} and H2\mathbb{H}^{2}. Finally, we study the hot spots constant C(Ω)\mathfrak{C}(\Omega) on convex domains using purely analytical methods. We refine the known Euclidean upper bound of C(Ω)\mathfrak{C}(\Omega) to 2.4828,2.4828, and obtain the corresponding hot spots constants for convex domains in non-Euclidean space forms for the first time. Our proofs combine the properties of Bessel and Legendre functions, estimation of eigenvalues and Green formulas. Our results quantitatively measure ``how wrong'' the hot spots conjecture can be.

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Cite

@article{arxiv.2607.17882,
  title  = {Critical points of second Neumann eigenfunctions on some convex domains in two-dimensional space forms},
  author = {Haiyun Deng and Xuyong Jiang and Xiaoping Yang},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2607.17882},
  year   = {2026}
}

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31 pages