English

The Fuglede conjecture for convex domains is true in all dimensions

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2022-07-05 v4 Functional Analysis Metric Geometry

Abstract

A set ΩRd\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^d is said to be spectral if the space L2(Ω)L^2(\Omega) has an orthogonal basis of exponential functions. A conjecture due to Fuglede (1974) stated that Ω\Omega is a spectral set if and only if it can tile the space by translations. While this conjecture was disproved for general sets, it has long been known that for a convex body ΩRd\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^d the "tiling implies spectral" part of the conjecture is in fact true. To the contrary, the "spectral implies tiling" direction of the conjecture for convex bodies was proved only in R2\mathbb{R}^2, and also in R3\mathbb{R}^3 under the a priori assumption that Ω\Omega is a convex polytope. In higher dimensions, this direction of the conjecture remained completely open (even in the case when Ω\Omega is a polytope) and could not be treated using the previously developed techniques. In this paper we fully settle Fuglede's conjecture for convex bodies affirmatively in all dimensions, i.e. we prove that if a convex body ΩRd\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^d is a spectral set then Ω\Omega is a convex polytope which can tile the space by translations. To prove this we introduce a new technique, involving a construction from crystallographic diffraction theory, which allows us to establish a geometric "weak tiling" condition necessary for a set ΩRd\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^d to be spectral.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1904.12262,
  title  = {The Fuglede conjecture for convex domains is true in all dimensions},
  author = {Nir Lev and Máté Matolcsi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1904.12262},
  year   = {2022}
}