Inverse spectral geometry

Global Riemannian geometry, including pinching (53C20) Methods of global Riemannian geometry, including PDE methods; curvature restrictions (53C21) Heat and other parabolic equation methods for PDEs on manifolds (58J35) Spectral problems; spectral geometry; scattering theory on manifolds (58J50)

Review text

Let \((M,g)\) be a compact Riemannian manifold and \(\Delta\) the associated Laplacian defined over the space of smooth functions \(C^{\infty}(M)\), then the spectrum \(\text{Spec}(M,g)\) of the Riemannian manifold is the set of eigenvalues of \(\Delta\), that is, real numbers \(\lambda\) such that there exists \(f\in C^{\infty}(M)\) (\(f\not=0\)) verifying \(\Delta f=\lambda f\). Since \(\Delta\) is elliptic, \(\text{Spec}(M,g)\) is discrete and the multiplicity of each \(\lambda\) is finite. Therefore, \[ \text{Spec}(M,g)=\{ 0=\lambda_0< \lambda_1< \lambda_2 < \dots +\infty\}. \] The spectrum is a Riemannian invariant, that is, invariant under isometries. Therefore, it is natural to study the spectrum for different kinds of Riemannian manifolds: Riemannian surfaces, Kähler manifolds, etc. On the other hand, we have the inverse spectral problem, that is, what information can one obtain from \(\text{Spec}(M,g)\) about the geometry and topology of \((M,g)\) and \(M\), respectively? First, it is known that it is not true that the spectrum determines the Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\) (up to isometry), as it can be seen in the examples of Milnor, Ikeda, Vigneras or others. Nevertheless, some partial results have been achieved in this direction, i.e., trying to determine the geometry and topology of the manifold. In the present paper, the author is interested in the following conjecture: every compact manifold is compactly determined by its spectrum. Remember that a manifold \(M\) is compactly determined by a set of conditions \({\mathcal P}\) (which \(M\) satisfies) if there is a finite set \(\{M_1,\dots, M_k\}\) and a set of metrics \({\mathcal M}_1,\dots , {\mathcal M}_k\) on \(M_1,\dots, M_k\), which are compact in the \(C^{\infty}(M)\) topology, such that any manifold \(M'\) which satisfies \({\mathcal P}\) is isometric to a manifold lying in one of the \({\mathcal M}_i\)'s. The author does not solve the conjecture but makes a presentation of techniques which, when used in combination, allow one to attack the conjecture. The paper is structured as follows: in Section \(1\) some of the ideas of the Cheeger finiteness theorem and its geometric relatives are presented; in Section \(2\) the bootstrapping techniques are developed; in Section \(3\) he shows some results of the problem of extracting geometric data from the spectrum (results from Cheeger, Buser or the author with Perry and Petersen). For the entire collection see [Zbl 0874.00038].

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