Eigenvalue estimates for submanifolds with locally bounded mean curvature (Q1403399)

The notion of the fundamental tone \(\lambda^*(\Omega)\) of a domain (with a compact closure and nonempty boundary) in a smooth Riemannian manifold \(M\) is well known. By taking limit of fundamental tones of geodesic balls of increasing radii one defines the fundamental tone of a complete noncompact manifold \(M.\) On a normal domain \(\Omega\) (piecewise smooth boundary) the fundamental tone equals the lowest eigenvalue \(\lambda_1(\Omega)\) of the Dirichlet eigenvalue problem. The authors use the notation \(\lambda (\Omega)\) to denote either \(\lambda_1(\Omega)\) or \(\lambda^*(\Omega)\) as appropriate to the type of the domain. Regarding the fundamental tone of a complete noncompact simply connected Riemannian \(n\)-manifold \(M\) with sectional curvature \(K_M \leq - a^2 < 0,\) McKean proved (1970) that \(\lambda^*(M) \geq (n-1)^2 a^2 / 4.\) Moreover, for a noncompact \(m\)-dimensional submanifold of the hyperbolic space with bounded mean curvature \(\| H\| \leq c < m-1\) Cheng and Leung proved (2001) that \(\lambda^*(M) \geq (m-1-c)^2 /4.\) In an important basic lemma the authors of the present paper apply the method of Cheng and Leung to bounded smooth vector fields \(X: \Omega \to T\Omega\) with positive divergence on a domain, yielding a lower bound for the fundamental tone of \(\Omega\). This lower bound is \(\frac{1}{4}C(\Omega)^2,\) where \(C(\Omega) = \sup \{ \inf \operatorname{div} X / \| X\| _\infty\} ,\) where the supremum is taken over all smooth vector fields \(X\) on \(\Omega\) with \(\| X \| _\infty < \infty\) and \(\inf \operatorname{div} X > 0.\) Choosing the vector field \(X\) as the gradient of the distance function the authors obtain local eigenvalue estimates of the lowest eigenvalue of a geodesic ball \(B_M(p, r)\) of radius \(r\) inside the cut locus. In the particular case, where the supremum of the sectional curvatures of \(M\) at points in the ball is zero one has \(\lambda_1 (B_M(p, r)) \geq n^2 / 4r^2\). As another application of the basic lemma the authors obtain estimates of \(\lambda (\Omega)\) for domains \(\Omega \subset M\cap B_N(p, r)\) for an immersion \(\phi: M \to N\) with locally bounded mean curvature. For submanifolds of Hadamard manifolds, where the sectional curvature of the ambient manifold satisfies \(K_N \leq - a^2 < 0\) and \(\| H \| \leq \beta < (m-1)a\) the following holds: \(\lambda (M) \geq [(m-1)a - \beta]/4 > 0.\) If \(\phi : M \to \mathbb R^3\) is a complete minimal surface in \(\mathbb R^3\) and \(\phi (M) \subset B_{\mathbb R^3}(0, r)\) then \(\lambda (M) \geq 1/4r^2.\)