Steklov zeta-invariants and a compactness theorem for isospectral families of planar domains (Q1653293)

The main motivation for this paper is the inverse problem of recovering a smooth simply connected multisheet planar domain from its Steklov spectrum. This problem turns out to be equivalent to the determination of a smooth positive function \(a\) on the unit sphere from the spectrum of \(a\Lambda\), where \(\Lambda\) is the Dirichlet to Neumann map on the sphere. If \(D: C^\infty (S) \to C^\infty (S)\) is angular differentiation on the sphere \(S\), then the Steklov zeta-invariants of a function \(a \in C^\infty (S)\) are \[ Z_m(a) =\text{Tr} \left[ \left( a \Lambda\right)^{2m}-\left( aD\right)^{2m}\right] \] The first main result of the paper is the determination of a lower bound for \(Z_m(a)\) for a real function \(a \in C^\infty (S)\). Then, a characterization of those smooth functions \(a\) such that \(Z_m(a)=0\) is given by the authors. The estimate for \(Z_m(a)\) is used to prove a compactness theorem for a Steklov isospectral family of planar domains in the \(C^\infty\) topology. Techniques from pseudodifferential calculus are used throughout the paper.