English

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 sin2x\sin^{-2}x.

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

R2 v1 2026-06-21T21:51:04.370Z