Hearing the shape of a triangle
Spectral Theory
2013-09-18 v2
Abstract
In 1966 Mark Kac asked the famous question 'Can one hear the shape of a drum?'. While this was later shown to be false in general, it was proved by C. Durso that one can hear the shape of a triangle. After an introduction to the general inverse spectral problem we will give a new proof of this fact. The central point of the argument is to show that area, perimeter and the sum of the reciprocals of the angles determine a triangle uniquely. This is proved using convexity arguments and the partial fraction expansion of .
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.1208.3163,
title = {Hearing the shape of a triangle},
author = {Daniel Grieser and Svenja Maronna},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1208.3163},
year = {2013}
}
Comments
13 pages, 4 figures (tikz), to appear in Notices of the AMS; compared to first version: added more references and pictures and related problems, added a discussion of wave invariants, slightly changed title