Spectral analysis of a family of second-order elliptic operators with nonlocal boundary condition indexed by a probability measure (Q2460015)

The aim of this paper is to investigate the eigenvalues and the spectral gap of the differential operator \(\mathcal{L}\), which coincides with the following second-order elliptic operator on a bounded domain \(D \subset\mathbb R^d\) \[ L = \tfrac{1}{2}\nabla \cdot a \nabla + b \cdot \nabla. \] The domain \(D\) is given by the following nonlocal boundary condition \[ \mathcal{D}_{\mathcal L} = \biggl\{f \in C^2(\overline{D}): \int_D f\,d\nu = f| _{\partial D} \biggr\}, \] where \(\nu\) is a probability measure on \(D\). The spectral gap of \(\mathcal{L}\), indexed by \(\nu\), is defined by \[ \gamma_1(\nu) \equiv \sup \{\operatorname{Re} \lambda: \lambda\neq0 \text{ is an eigenvalue for }\mathcal L\}. \] The operator \(\mathcal{L}\) and its spectral gap have probabilistic significance. Let denote by \(\{\lambda_n^D \}_{n=0}^\infty\) the eigenvalues of the operator \(L\) \((\mathcal{L}\) will be never self-adjoint) and by \(\{\Phi_n^D\}_{n=0}^\infty\) the normalized eigenfunctions. A characterization of the spectrum is given, for example, under the assumption that the Fourier series \(\sum_{n=0}^\infty F_n/\lambda_n^D\Phi_n^D(x)\) converges uniformly and absolutely, where \(F_n \equiv \int_D \Phi_n^D \,d\mu_{\text{rev}}.\)