English

Dirichlet eigenfunctions with nonzero mean value

Analysis of PDEs 2025-03-18 v3 Spectral Theory

Abstract

We consider Laplacian eigenfunctions on a domain ΩRd\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^d. Under Neumann boundary conditions, the first eigenfunction is constant and the others have mean value 0. The situation is different for Dirichlet boundary conditions: on `generic' domains, one would expect that every eigenfunction has nonzero mean value. The other extreme is the ball in Rd\mathbb{R}^d, where among the first nn eigenfunctions only n1/d\sim n^{1/d} have a mean value different from zero. We prove that this rate is sharp in \textit{any} smooth domain, up to a logarithmic factor: in any smooth domain~Ω\Omega, among the first nn Dirichlet eigenfunctions at least (logn)1/2n1/d (\log{n})^{-1/2} \cdot n^{1/d} have a nonzero mean.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2312.14122,
  title  = {Dirichlet eigenfunctions with nonzero mean value},
  author = {Stefan Steinerberger and Raghavendra Venkatraman},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2312.14122},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

version 2, strenghtened result