Given a centrally symmetric convex body, consider the zero set of the Fourier transform of its characteristic function. We study how large the distance from this set to the origin can be when the volume of the body is fixed. A 2009 conjecture of Benguria, Levitin, and Parnovski asserts that the maximum is attained by a Euclidean ball. We disprove it in all dimensions greater than one. In the plane, every regular centrally symmetric polygon with at least twelve sides outperforms the disk, albeit by a tiny margin, and the regular dodecagon is best among them. In dimensions three and higher, no maximiser exists.

We prove comparison inequalities for Dirichlet-to-Neumann maps corresponding to different non-positive Helmholtz parameters. For convex domains our bounds are sharp, and the resulting eigenvalue inequalities partially confirm an earlier conjecture, which we show does not hold in full generality. We further obtain geometry-dependent versions for arbitrary sufficiently regular domains, together with extensions to compact Riemannian manifolds with boundary. We also discuss analogous questions for metric graphs.

The study of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann map and the associated Steklov problem for the Laplace equation has been a central topic in spectral geometry over the past decade. In this survey, we consider a more general framework in which the Laplace equation is replaced by the Helmholtz equation. We examine how the properties of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann eigenvalues and eigenfunctions depend on the parameter in the Helmholtz equation and describe new phenomena arising when this parameter is nonzero, as opposed to the Laplace case. In particular, we present various eigenvalue inequalities, analyse spectral asymptotics in different regimes, and investigate nodal domains and other features of eigenfunctions. We also discuss applications where the Helmholtz parameter plays an essential role, as well as challenges encountered in the numerical computation of the Dirichlet-to-Neumann spectrum.

We prove Pólya's conjecture for the Neumann eigenvalues of the Laplacian on Euclidean balls in dimensions three and higher. The proof further develops the approach introduced in our earlier work on the two-dimensional case and on Dirichlet eigenvalues in arbitrary dimensions. The main difficulty in the higher dimensional Neumann case is that one has to estimate zeros of the derivatives of ultraspherical Bessel functions, rather than of the usual Bessel functions. For low-lying eigenvalues, we use variational estimates involving dimension-dependent test functions, which is a novel ingredient allowing us to control a larger dimension-scaled frequency range. Other components of the proof include phase-function bounds, lattice-point counting techniques, and computer-assisted arguments.

We prove Polya's conjecture for the eigenvalues of the Dirichlet Laplacian on annular domains. Our approach builds upon and extends the methods we previously developed for disks and balls. It combines variational bounds, estimates of Bessel phase functions, refined lattice point counting techniques and a rigorous computer-assisted analysis. As a by-product, we also derive a two-term upper bound for the Dirichlet eigenvalue counting function of the disk, improving upon Polya's original estimate.

We investigate the Steklov eigenvalue problem in an exterior Euclidean domain. First, we present several formulations of this problem and establish the equivalences between them. Next, we examine various properties of the exterior Steklov eigenvalues and eigenfunctions. One of our main findings is an Escobar-type lower bound for the first exterior Steklov eigenvalue on convex domains in dimensions three and higher. This bound is expressed in terms of the principal curvatures of the boundary and is sharp, with equality attained for a ball. Moreover, it implies the existence of a sequence of convex domains with fixed volume and the first exterior Steklov eigenvalues tending to infinity. This contrasts with the interior case, as well as with the two-dimensional exterior case, for which we show that an analogue of the Weinstock isoperimetric inequality holds.

We prove an analogue of P\'olya's conjecture for the eigenvalues of the magnetic Schr\"odinger operator with Aharonov--Bohm potential on the disk, for Dirichlet and magnetic Neumann boundary conditions. This answers a question posed by R. L. Frank and A. M. Hansson in 2008.

We prove explicit uniform two-sided bounds for the phase functions of Bessel functions and of their derivatives. As a consequence, we obtain new enclosures for the zeros of Bessel functions and their derivatives in terms of inverse values of some elementary functions. These bounds are valid, with a few exceptions, for all zeros and all Bessel functions with non-negative indices. We provide numerical evidence showing that our bounds either improve or closely match the best previously known ones.

We establish the two-term spectral asymptotics for boundary value problems of linear elasticity on a smooth compact Riemannian manifold of arbitrary dimension. We also present some illustrative examples and give a historical overview of the subject. In particular, we correct erroneous results published by Liu (J Geom Anal 31:10164–10193, 2021).

The celebrated Pólya’s conjecture (1954) in spectral geometry states that the eigenvalue counting functions of the Dirichlet and Neumann Laplacian on a bounded Euclidean domain can be estimated from above and below, respectively, by the leading term of Weyl’s asymptotics. Pólya’s conjecture is known to be true for domains which tile Euclidean space, and, in addition, for some special domains in higher dimensions. In this paper, we prove Pólya’s conjecture for the disk, making it the first non-tiling planar domain for which the conjecture is verified. We also confirm Pólya’s conjecture for arbitrary planar sectors, and, in the Dirichlet case, for balls of any dimension. Along the way, we develop the known links between the spectral problems in the disk and certain lattice counting problems. A key novel ingredient is the observation, made in recent work of the last named author, that the corresponding eigenvalue and lattice counting functions are related not only asymptotically, but in fact satisfy certain uniform bounds. Our proofs are purely analytic, except for a rigorous computer-assisted argument needed to cover the short interval of values of the spectral parameter in the case of the Neumann problem in the disk.

How close is the Dirichlet-to-Neumann (DtN) map to the square root of the corresponding boundary Laplacian? This question has been actively investigated in recent years. Somewhat surprisingly, a lot of techniques involved can be traced back to a newly rediscovered manuscript of H\"ormander from the 1950s. We present H\"ormander's approach and its applications, with an emphasis on eigenvalue estimates and spectral asymptotics. In particular, we obtain results for the DtN maps on non-smooth boundaries in the Riemannian setting, the DtN operators for the Helmholtz equation and the DtN operators on differential forms.

We study the propagator of the wave equation on a closed Riemannian manifold $M$. We propose a geometric approach to the construction of the propagator as a single oscillatory integral global both in space and in time with a distinguished complex-valued phase function. This enables us to provide a global invariant definition of the full symbol of the propagator - a scalar function on the cotangent bundle - and an algorithm for the explicit calculation of its homogeneous components. The central part of the paper is devoted to the detailed analysis of the subprincipal symbol; in particular, we derive its explicit small time asymptotic expansion. We present a general geometric construction that allows one to visualise topological obstructions and describe their circumvention with the use of a complex-valued phase function. We illustrate the general framework with explicit examples in dimension two.

In the present paper we develop an approach to obtain sharp spectral asymptotics for Steklov type problems on planar domains with corners. Our main focus is on the two-dimensional sloshing problem, which is a mixed Steklov-Neumann boundary value problem describing small vertical oscillations of an ideal fluid in a container or in a canal with a uniform cross-section. We prove a two-term asymptotic formula for sloshing eigenvalues. In particular, this confirms a conjecture posed by Fox and Kuttler in 1983. We also obtain similar eigenvalue asymptotics for other related mixed Steklov type problems, and discuss applications to the study of Steklov spectral asymptotics on polygons.

In this paper we describe a simple method that allows for a fast direct computation of the scattering matrix for a surface with hyperbolic cusps from the Neumann-to-Dirichlet map on the compact manifold with boundary obtained by removing the cusps. We illustrate that even if the Neumann-to-Dirichlet map is obtained by a finite element method (FEM) one can achieve good accuracy for the scattering matrix. We give various interesting examples of how this can be used to investigate the behaviour of resonances under conformal perturbations or when moving in Teichmüller space. For example, based on numerical experiments we rediscover the four arithmetic surfaces of genus one with one cusp. This demonstrates that it is possible to identify arithmetic objects using FEM. All the videos accompanying this paper are available with its online version, or externally either at http://michaellevitin.net/hyperbolic.html or as a dedicated YouTube playlist.

This paper studies the inverse Steklov spectral problem for curvilinear polygons. For generic curvilinear polygons with angles less than $\pi$, we prove that the asymptotics of Steklov eigenvalues obtained in arXiv:1908.06455 determines, in a constructive manner, the number of vertices and the properly ordered sequence of side lengths, as well as the angles up to a certain equivalence relation. We also present counterexamples to this statement if the generic assumptions fail. In particular, we show that there exist non-isometric triangles with asymptotically close Steklov spectra. Among other techniques, we use a version of the Hadamard--Weierstrass factorisation theorem, allowing us to reconstruct a trigonometric function from the asymptotics of its roots.

This paper is devoted to studying impedance eigenvalues (that is, eigenvalues of a particular Dirichlet-to-Neumann map) for the time harmonic linear elastic wave problem, and their potential use as target-signatures for fluid-solid interaction problems. We first consider several possible families of eigenvalues of the elasticity problem, focusing on certain impedance eigenvalues that are an analogue of Steklov eigenvalues. We show that one of these families arises naturally in inverse scattering. We also analyse their approximation from far field measurements of the scattered pressure field in the fluid, and illustrate several alternative methods of approximation in the case of an isotropic elastic disk.

We study the (massless) Dirac operator on a 3-sphere equipped with Riemannian metric. For the standard metric the spectrum is known. In particular. the eigenvalues closest to zero are the two double eigenvalues +3/2 and -3/2. Our aim is to analyse the behaviour of eigenvalues when the metric is perturbed in an arbitrary smooth fashion from the standard one. We derive explicit perturbation formulae for the two eigenvalues closest to zero, taking account of the second variations. Note that these eigenvalues remain double eigenvalues under perturbations of the metric: they cannot split because of a particular symmetry of the Dirac operator in dimension three (it commutes with the antilinear operator of charge conjugation). Our perturbation formulae show that in the first approximation our two eigenvalues maintain symmetry about zero and are completely determined by the increment of Riemannian volume. Spectral asymmetry is observed only in the second approximation of the perturbation process. As an example we consider a special family of metrics, the so-called generalized Berger spheres, for which the eigenvalues can he evaluated explicitly.

We consider a symmetric block operator spectral problem with two spectral parameters. Under some reasonable restrictions, we state localisation theorems for the pair-eigenvalues and discuss relations to a class of non-self-adjoint spectral problems.

We show that zero is not an eigenvalue of the conformal Laplacian for generic Riemannian metrics. We also discuss non-compactness for sequences of metrics with growing number of negative eigenvalues of the conformal Laplacian. Mathematics Subject Classi cation (2010). 58J50, 58J37, 58D17, 53A30.