In this thesis, we study the conformal spectrum of a closed surface and the conformal Steklov spectrum of a compact surface with boundary and their application to conformal geometry and topology. Let (Σ,c) be a closed surface endowed with a conformal class c then the k-th conformal eigenvalue is defined as Λ_k(Σ,c)=sup{λ_k(g) Aire(Σ,g)| g ∈ c), where λ_k(g) is the k-th Laplace-Beltrami eigenvalue of the metric g on Σ. Note that we start with λ_0(g) = 0 Taking the supremum over all conformal classes C on Σ one gets the following topological invariant of Σ: Λ_k(Σ)=sup{Λ_k(Σ,c)| c ∈ C}. It follows from the paper [65] that the quantities Λ_k(Σ, c) and Λ_k(Σ) are well-defined. Suppose that for a metric g on Σ the following identity holds λ_k(g) Aire(Σ, g) = Λ_k(Σ). Then one says that the metric g is maximal for the functional λ_k(g) Aire(Σ, g). In the paper [73] it was shown that the maximal metrics for the functional λ_1(g) Aire(Σ, g) at worst can have conical singularities. In this thesis we show that the maximal metrics for the functionals λ_1(g) Aire(T^2, g) and λ_1(g) Aire(KL, g), where T^2 and KL stand for the 2-torus and the Klein bottle respectively, cannot have conical singularities. This result is a corollary of a conformal class classification theorem by metrics induced from a branched minimal immersion into a round sphere that we also prove in the thesis. Another invariant that we study in this thesis is the k-th Friedlander-Nadirashvili invariant defined as: I_k(Σ) = inf{Λ_k(Σ, c)| c ∈ C}. The invariant I_1(Σ) was introduced in the paper [34]. In this thesis we prove that for any orientable surface and any non-orientable surface of odd genus I_k(Σ)=I_k(S^2) and for any non-orientable surface of even genus I_k(RP^2) ≥ I_k(Σ)>I_k(S^2). Here S^2 and RP^2 denote the 2-sphere and the projective plane respectively. We also conjecture that I_k(Σ) are invariants of cobordisms of closed manifolds. The conformal Steklov spectrum is defined in a similar way. Let (Σ, c) be a compact surface with non-empty boundary ∂Σ then the k-th conformal Steklov eigenvalues is defined by the formula: σ*_k(Σ, c)=sup{σ_k(g) Longueur(∂Σ, g)| g ∈ c}, where σ_k(g) is the k-th Steklov eigenvalue of the metric g on Σ. Here we suppose that σ_0(g) = 0. Similarly to the closed problem one can define the following quantities: σ*_k(Σ)=sup{σ*_k(Σ, c)| c ∈ C} and I^σ_k(Σ)=inf{σ*_k(Σ, c)| c ∈ C}. The results of the paper [16] imply that all these quantities are well-defined. In this thesis we obtain a formula for the limit of the k-th conformal Steklov eigenvalue when the sequence of conformal classes degenerates. Using this formula we show that for any surface with boundary I^σ_k(Σ)= I^σ_k(D^2), where D^2 stands for the 2-disc. We also notice that I^σ_k(Σ) are invariants of cobordisms of surfaces with boundary. Moreover, we obtain an upper bound for the functional σ^k(g) Longueur(∂Σ, g), where Σ is non-orientable, in terms of its genus and the number of boundary components.

The theme of this thesis is the study of the eigenfunctions of the Laplacian and Schrödinger operators. Let (M,g) be a manifold and V : M → R. We are looking at solutions of the following equation: (∆_g + V ) f_λ = λ f_λ . The operator ∆_g + V is called a Schrödinger operator and V is called the potential. The simplest and most studied example is the Laplacian (we put V ≡ 0 on M ). If M is compact and without boundary, then there exists a sequence 0 = λ_0 < λ_1 ≤ λ_2 -> +∞ that makes the spectrum of ∆_g and a sequence of eigenfunctions f_n such that ∆_g f_n = λ_n f_n . This decomposition also holds for various potentials and manifolds. Firstly, we studied the nodal domains of the eigenfunctions as the eigenvalues tend to infinity. The nodal domains of a function f on M are the connected components of M \f^{−1} (0). They can be used to understand the oscillatory character of eigenfunctions by counting the number of times that f changes sign. The principal goal of this thesis was to generalize Pleijel’s nodal domain theorem [52] to other Schrödinger operators. In the article [2], we showed that the upper bound in Pleijel’s theorem also holds for the quantum harmonic oscillator. Furthermore, this bound can be improved depending on the quadratic form that defines the potential. Afterwards, in the article [3], we generalized the result from [2] to a large class of radial potentials, including ones that tend to zero at infinity. These include the Coulomb potential, which modelizes the hydrogen atom in free space. We also studied the number of critical points of Laplace eigenfunctions. Until recently, there were only known lower bounds for certain manifolds [36], but no upper bound was known. In 2019, Buhovsky, Logunov and Sodin [18] constructed a metric on T^2 and a sequence of Laplace eigenfunctions which all have infinitely many critical points. In our article [4], we used a different method to create metrics on T^2 and S^2 and Laplace eigenfunctions for these metrics that have infinitely many critical points. Furthermore, these metrics can be taken arbitrarily close to the flat metric on T^2 and the round metric on S^2. These constructions also provide strong counterexamples to the Courant-Hermann conjecture on the number of nodal domains of linear combinations of Laplace eigenfunctions.

This thesis contains two articles that I wrote during my M.Sc. studies. The first chapter serves as an introduction to both articles. Some concepts of spectral geometry in the context of the Steklov problem are presented, as well as the main results of the subsequent chapters. The second chapter concerns the parametric Steklov problem on smooth surfaces. We obtain a complete asymptotic expansion of the eigenvalues of the problem by using pseudodifferential techniques. This generalizes the already known spectral asymptotics of the classical Steklov problem. We deduce new geometric invariants determined by the spectrum. The third chapter concerns the sloshing problem on triangular prisms. The goal is to understand how the angles in the prism affect the second term in the asymptotic expansion of the eigenvalue counting function. By constructing quasimodes, we obtain an expression for this term that we conjecture as being correct for the true eigenvalues. This conjecture is then supported by numerical experiments.

Dans ce mémoire, nous travaillons sur les ensembles nodaux de combinaisons de fonctions propres du laplacien, particulièrement sur la sphère et le tore plat. On bornera les nombres de Betti de ces ensembles en fonction de la valeur propre maximale. D'une certaine façon, cela généralise le fameux théorème de Courant.

This thesis deals with the harmonicity of musical instruments through spectral geometry. First, we present the known results concerning the guitar string, the circular drum and the tabla ; the first is harmonic, the second is not, and the last is somewhere in between. The case of the timpani constitutes the major part of our work. The physicist-engineer Robert E. Davis had already studied its quasi-harmonicity and here we undergo a mathematical proofreading of his approach. By combining analytical and numerical methods, we show that the sound box of the timpani allows an adjustement of the vibration frequencies of the form ω_(i1) , with 1 ≤ i ≤ 5, so that they get close to the ideal 2 : 3 : 4 : 5 : 6 ratio, while it also stifles some other dissonant modes. To do so, we develop a simplified model of a cylindrical timpani based on physics and on what Davis suggests in his thesis. This model provides a system of equations divided into three parts : the vibration of the skin and the pressure inside and outside the timpani. We use the method of Green’s functions to find the expressions of the pressures. We use these together with a modified Fourier-Bessel series development to solve the equations of the vibration of the skin. In the end, the solving of these equations is reduced to an infinite matrix system that we analyze numerically. Using Mathematica and this matrix system, we find the vibrational frequencies of the timpani, which allows us to analyze the harmonicity of the instrument. Thanks to a measure of dissonance, we optimize the harmonicity of different timpani models with different cylinder radii, heights and tensions.

This thesis is divided in three parts : in the first one, spectral inequalities based on the Cheeger constant and Jammes-Cheeger constant, its analogue for the Steklov problem, are introduced. An upper bound is obtained for the Laplace eigenvalues on a compact manifold without boundary by generalising a result from Buser. Then a lower bound for the k-th Steklov eigenvalue which depends only on the k-th Jammes-Cheeger constant is proved using a modified version of a proof by Lee, Gharan and Trevisan. In the second part, it is shown that given a manifold M embedded in R^(n+1) , there does not exist a minimizer of the Steklov eigenvalues within the set of manifolds embedded in R^(n+1) with boundary ∂M . Finally, in the third part of this thesis, inspired by Christianson’s results on triangles and simplices, the Neumann mass on the border of polytopes of a Dirichlet eigenfunction is studied. An explicit formula expressing the eigenvalue in terms of the Neumann mass on the faces of the polytope of the corresponding eigenfunction is proved.

In this thesis, we study the spectrum of the Laplacian and of other related operators. When defined on either a closed compact Riemannian manifold, or a manifold with boundary and self-adjoint boundary conditions, the Laplacian Δ has a real and discrete spectrum ?1(M) ≤ ?2≤ (M)… ↗∞ accumulating only at ∞ The numbers ?j (M) are those for which there is a non-trivial solution to the equation Δ? + ?? = 0. We are more specifically interested in the asymptotic behaviour of the counting function N(?; M) ≔ #{ ?j (M) ˂ ?}. Hermann Weyl has shown in 1911 [80] what is now known as Weyl’s law, R(?; M) ≔ N(?; M) − ω^d/〖(2π)〗_d Vol(M)?d/2 as ? ⟶ ∞ where ωd is the volume of the unit ball in dimension d. We want to determine the size of R(?; M) ≔ N(?; M) − ω^d/〖(2π)〗_d Vol(M)?d/2. In the context at hand, we have translated this problem in terms of the geometry of numbers, the study of the interaction between lattice points, e.g. ℤd and convex sets. In the first chapter, we make a precise description of the problems studied and how they can be linked to the geometry of numbers. Furthermore, we describe in more detail themain techniques that we have used. The second chapter, titled On a generalised Gauss circle problem and integrated density of states [54], has been written in collaboration with Leonid Parnovski. There, we study the spectrum of the Laplacian on a product of a flat torus and Euclidean space. In this case, the spectrum is not discrete. However, we study the integrated density of states, which takes the role of the eigenvalue counting function and also satisfies Weyl’s law. We obtain upper and lower bounds on R(?) in this context, which depend on the relative dimensions of the flat torus and Euclidean space. When the dimension of the torus is strictly smaller than that of the Euclidean space the upper and lower bound share the same polynomial order. We also obtain an asymptotic expansion up to constant order for the integrated density of states of a magnetic Schrödinger operator with constant potential. The third chapter, titled The Steklov spectrum of cuboids [26] has been written together with Alexandre Girouard, Iosif Polterovich and Alessandro Savo. We study the Steklov spectrum, i.e.the spectrum of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator on cuboids of any dimension. Eigenvalue asymptotics for this operator had not been very much studied on domains whose boundaries are not smooth and cuboids provide a first example of such domains. The spectrum is discrete and only accumulates at infinity, and we obtain a two-term Weyl’s law for the Steklov spectrum. We also obtain an isoperimetric inequality for the first non-trivial eigenvalue. Finally, we prove that some sequence of eigenfunctions concentrates along edges, which are subsets of measure zero, a phenomenon named scarring. In the last chapter, titled Eigenvalue optimisation on flat tori and lattice points in anisotropically expanding domains [53], we turn our attention to the spectrum of the Laplacian on flat tori. We obtain bounds on R(?) depending on the injectivity radius. We then use those bounds to obtain that any sequence of flat tori ?K maximising the kth eigenvalue of the Laplacian must degenerate when dimension is inferior or equal to 10. To do so, we have stated the problem at hand in terms of counting points of ℤd inside anisotropically expanding domains, generalising results of Yuri Kordyukov and Andrei Yakovlev [49].

The Steklov operator on a Riemannian manifold with boundary is an elliptic pseudodifferential operator of order one. It is known that the asymptotics of the Steklov spectrum of a surface is determined, up to a very small error, by the lengths of the connected components of the boundary. In this thesis, we focus on the asymptotic properties of Steklov eigenfunctions on surfaces. In particular, we show that if all the ratios between the lengths of the connected components of the boundary are irrational numbers not admitting fast approximation by rationals, then each high energy eigenfunction concentrates along a single boundary component.

The main topic of the present thesis is spectral geometry. This area of mathematics is concerned with establishing links between the geometry of a Riemannian manifold and its spectrum. The spectrum of a closed Riemannian manifold M equipped with a Riemannian metric g associated with the Laplace-Beltrami operator is a sequence of non-negative numbers tending to infinity. The square root of any number of this sequence represents a frequency of vibration of the manifold. This thesis consists of four articles all related to various aspects of spectral geometry. The first paper, “Superlevel sets and nodal extrema of Laplace eigenfunction”, is presented in Chapter 1. Nodal geometry of various elliptic operators, such as the Laplace-Beltrami operator, is studied. The goal of this paper is to generalize a result due to L. Polterovich and M. Sodin that gives a bound on the distribution of nodal extrema on a Riemann surface for a large class of functions, including eigenfunctions of the Laplace-Beltrami operator. The proof given by L. Polterovich and M. Sodin is only valid for Riemann surfaces. Therefore, I present a different approach to the problem that works for eigenfunctions of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on Riemannian manifolds of arbitrary dimension. The second and the third papers of this thesis are focused on a different elliptic operator, namely the p-Laplacian. This operator has the particularity of being non-linear. The article “Principal frequency of the p-Laplacian and the inradius of Euclidean domains” is presented in Chapter 2. It discusses lower bounds on the first eigenvalue of the Dirichlet eigenvalue problem for the p-Laplace operator in terms of the inner radius of the domain. In particular, I show that if p is greater than the dimension, then it is possible to prove such lower bound without any hypothesis on the topology of the domain. Such bounds have previously been studied by well-known mathematicians, such as W. K. Haymann, E. Lieb, R. Banuelos, and T. Carroll. Their papers are mostly oriented toward the case of the usual Laplace operator. The generalization of such lower bounds for the p-Laplacian is done in my third paper, “Bounds on the Principal Frequency of the p-Laplacian”. It is presented in Chapter 3. My fourth paper, “Wolf-Keller theorem of Neumann Eigenvalues”, is a joint work with Guillaume Roy-Fortin. This paper is concerned with the shape optimization problem in the case of the Laplace operator with Neumann boundary conditions. The main result of our paper is that eigenvalues of the Neumann boundary problem are not always maximized by disks among planar domains of given area. This joint work is presented in Chapter 4.

The aim of this thesis is to explore the geometric properties of eigenfunctions of the isotropic quantum harmonic oscillator. We focus on studying the nodal domains, which are the connected components of the complement of the nodal (i.e. zero) set of an eigenfunction. Assume that the eigenvalues are listed in an increasing order. According to a fundamental theorem due to Courant, an eigenfunction corresponding to the $n$-th eigenvalue has at most $n$ nodal domains. This result has been originally proved for the Dirichlet eigenvalue problem on a bounded Euclidean domain, but it also holds for the eigenfunctions of a quantum harmonic oscillator. Courant's theorem was refined by Pleijel in 1956, who proved a more precise result on the asymptotic behaviour of the number of nodal domains of the Dirichlet eigenfunctions on bounded domains as the eigenvalues tend to infinity. In the thesis we prove a similar result in the case of the isotropic quantum harmonic oscillator. To do so, we use a combination of classical tools from spectral geometry (some of which were used in Pleijel’s original argument) with a number of new ideas, which include applications of techniques from algebraic geometry and the study of unbounded nodal domains.

In this thesis, we study eigenfunctions of the Laplace-Beltrami operator - or simply the Laplacian - on a closed surface, i.e. a two dimensional smooth, compact Riemannian manifold without boundary. These functions satisfy $\Delta_g \phi_\lambda + \lambda \phi_\lambda = 0$ and the eigenvalues form an infinite sequence. The nodal set of a Laplace eigenfunction is its zero set and is of interest since the vibrating plates experiments of Chladni at the beginning of the 19th century as well as, more recently, in the context of quantum mechanics. The size of the nodal sets has been largely studied recently, notably by Donnelly and Fefferman, Colding and Minicozzi, Hezari and Sogge, Mangoubi as well as Sogge and Zelditch.The study of eigenfunction growth is also an active topic, with the recent works of Donnelly and Fefferman, Sogge, Toth and Zelditch to name only a few. Our thesis follows the work of Nazarov, Polterovich and Sodin and links growth and nodal sets of eigenfunctions in the asymptotic $\lambda \nearrow \infty$. To do so, we first consider growth exponents, which measure the local growth of eigenfunctions via their uniform norm. The average local growth of an eigenfunction is built by averaging growth exponents defined on small disks of wavelength like radius over the whole surface. We show that the size of the nodal set is controlled by the product of this average local growth with the frequency $\sqrt{\lambda}$. This result allows a function theoretical reformulation of the famous conjecture of Yau, which predicts that the size of the nodal set grows like the frequency. Our work also strengthens the common intuition that an eigenfunction behaves in many ways like a polynomial of degree $\sqrt{\lambda}$. We then generalize our results to growth exponents built upon $L^q$ norms. We are also led to study functions belonging to the kernel of Schrödinger operators with small potential in the plane. For such functions, we obtain two results linking growth and size of nodal sets.

There exist many ways to study the spectrum of the Laplace operator. This master thesis focuses on optimal spectral partitions of planar domains. More specifically, when imposing Dirichlet boundary conditions, we try to find partitions that achieve the infimum (over all the partitions of a given number of components) of the maximum of the first eigenvalue of the Laplacian in all the subdomains. This question has been actively studied in recent years by B. Helffer, T. Hoffmann-Ostenhof, S. Terracini and their collaborators, who obtained a number of important analytic and numerical results. In the present thesis we propose a similar problem, but for the Neumann boundary conditions. In this case, we are looking for spectral maximal, rather than minimal, partitions. More precisely, we attempt to find the maximum over all possible $k$-partitions of the minimum of the first non-zero Neumann eigenvalue of each component. This question appears to be more difficult than the one for the Dirichlet conditions, since many properties of Dirichlet eigenvalues, such as domain monotonicity, no longer hold in the Neumann case. Nevertheless, some results are obtained for 2-partitions of symmetric domains, and specific partitions are found analytically for rectangular domains. In addition, some general properties of optimal spectral partitions and open problems are also discussed.

The study of liquid sloshing in a container is a classical problem of hydrodynamics that has been actively investigated by mathematicians and engineers over the past 150 years. The present thesis is concerned with the properties of eigenfunctions of the two-dimensional sloshing problem on axially symmetric planar domains. Here the axis of symmetry is assumed to be orthogonal to the free surface of the fluid. In particular, we show that the second and the third eigenfunctions of such a problem are, respectively, odd and even with respect to the axial symmetry. There is a well-known conjecture that all eigenvalues of the two-dimensional sloshing problem are simple. Kozlov, Kuznetsov and Motygin [1] proved the simplicity of the first non-zero eigenvalue for domains satisfying the John's condition. In the thesis we show that for axially symmetric planar domains, the first two non-zero eigenvalues of the sloshing problem are simple.

The goal of this master's thesis is to explore the properties of the solutions of the eigenvalue problem for the Laplace operator on a disk as the eigenvalues go to in nity. More speci cally, we study the growth rate of the pointwise and the L1 norms of the eigenfunctions. Let D be the unit disk and @D be its boundary (the unit circle). We study the solutions of the eigenvalue problem f = f with either Dirichlet boundary condition (fj@D = 0) or Neumann boundary condition ( @f @nj@D = 0; note that for the disk the normal derivative is simply the derivative with respect to the radial variable: @ @n = @ @r ). The corresponding eigenfunctions are given by: f (r; ) = fn;m(r; ) = Jn(kn;mr)(Acos(n ) + B sin(n )) (Dirichlet) fN (r; ) = fN n;m(r; ) = Jn(k0 n;mr)(Acos(n ) + B sin(n )) (Neumann) where Jn is the nth order Bessel function of the rst type, kn;m is its mth zero and k0 n;m is the mth zero of its derivative (here we denote the eigenfunctions for the Dirichlet problem by f and those for the Neumann problem by fN). The spectrum of the Laplacian on D, SpD( ), that is the set of its eigenvalues, is given by: SpD( ) = f : f = fg = fk2 n;m : n = 0; 1; 2; : : :m = 1; 2; : : :g (Dirichlet) SpN D( ) = f : fN = fNg = fk0 n;m 2 : n = 0; 1; 2; : : :m = 1; 2; : : :g (Neumann) Finally, we normalize the L2 norm of the eigenfunctions on D, namely: R D F2 da = 1 (here and further on we use the notation F for the normalized eigenfunctions and f for arbitrary eigenfunctions). Under these conditions, we study the growth rate of the L1 norm of the normalized eigenfunctions, jjF jj1, in relation to . It is important to mention that the L1 norm of a function on a given domain corresponds to the iv maximum of its absolute value on the domain. Note that depends on two parameters, m and n, and the relation between and the L1 norm depends on the regime at which m and n change as goes to in nity. Studying the behavior of the L1 norm is linked to the study of the set E(D) which is the set of accumulation points of log(jjF jj1)= log : One of our main results is that [7=36; 1=4] E(B2) [1=18; 1=4]: The thesis is organized as follows. Introduction and main results are presented in chapter 1. In chapter 2 we review some well-known facts regarding the eigenfunctions of the Laplacian on the disk and the properties of the Bessel functions. In chapter 3 we prove results on pointwise growth of eigenfunctions. In particular, we show that, if m=n ! 0, then, for any xed point (r; ) on D, the value of F (r; ) decreases exponentially as ! 1. In chapter 4 we study the growth of the L1 norm. Eigenfunctions of the Neumann problem are discussed in chapter 5. Some numerical results are presented in chapter 6. A discussion and a summary of our work could be found in chapter 7.

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