Location of hot spots in thin curved strips (Q1710520)

The authors prove that the famous ``hot-spot conjecture'' for Neumann eigenvalues of the Laplacian holds for a certain class of domains, namely, thin strips about smooth curves in 2-dimensional oriented Riemannian manifolds. The ``hot-spot'' conjecture can be stated as follows: \[ \forall x\in \Omega\,,\;\;\;\min_{\partial\Omega}u_2 < u_2(x)< \max_{\partial\Omega}u_2, \] where \(u_2\) is an eigenfunction associated with \(\lambda_2\), the first positive eigenvalue of the Neumann Laplacian on \(\Omega\), and \(\partial\Omega\) is the boundary of \(\Omega\). Such conjecture holds for various classes of domains. However, there are counter-examples showing that the conjecture fails for certain domains of \(\mathbb R^n\) of manifolds. The authors prove the validity of the conjecture for a quite large class of domains on 2-dimensional Riemannian manifolds. The domains considered in the present article are not covered by the classes for which already the conjecture is proved to hold. The authors consider smooth curves \(\Gamma:[0,L]\rightarrow\mathcal A\), where \(\mathcal A\) is a smooth oriented 2-dimensional Riemannian manifold. The strip \(\Omega_{\varepsilon}\) about \(\Gamma\) of width \(2\varepsilon\) is the set of all points \(x\in\mathcal A\) for which there exists a geodesic of length less than \(\varepsilon\) from \(x\) which meets \(\Gamma\) orthogonally. The authors prove that there exists a positive constant \(\varepsilon_0\) depending on \(\mathcal A\) and \(\Gamma\) such that for all \(\varepsilon\in]0,\varepsilon_0[\) the hot-spot conjecture holds for \(\Omega_{\varepsilon}\). The result is a consequence of the fact that the authors are able to locate precisely all points of maximum and minimum of all Neumann eigenfunctions (not only \(u_2\)) of \(\Omega_{\varepsilon}\), for \(\varepsilon\) sufficiently small. This is achieved by comparing Neumann eigenfunctions and eigenvalues on the strip \(\Omega_{\varepsilon}\) with Neumann eigenfunctions and eigenvalues of the one-dimensional Neumann Laplacian on \((0,L)\), when \(\varepsilon\) is sufficiently small.