Perturbing the principal Dirichlet eigenfunction

We study the principal Dirichlet eigenfunction $\varphi_U$ when the domain $U$ is a perturbation of a bounded inner uniform domain in a strictly local regular Dirichlet space. We prove that if $U$ is suitably contained in between two inner uniform domains, then $\varphi_U$ admits two-sided bounds in terms of the principal Dirichlet eigenfunctions of the two approximating domains. The main ingredients of our proof include domain monotonicity properties associated to Dirichlet boundary conditions, intrinsic ultracontractivity estimates, and parabolic Harnack inequality. As an application of our results, we give explicit expressions comparable to $\varphi_U$ for certain domains $U\subseteq \mathbb{R}^n$, as well as improved Dirichlet heat kernel estimates for such domains. We also prove that under a uniform exterior ball condition on $U$, a point achieving the maximum of $\varphi_U$ is separated away from the boundary, complementing a result of Rachh and Steinerberger arXiv:1608.06604. Our principal Dirichlet eigenfunction estimates are applicable to second-order uniformly elliptic operators in Euclidean space, Riemannian manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature, and Lie groups of polynomial volume growth.