Tubes and eigenvalues for negatively curved manifolds (Q1204882)

This paper is concerned with eigenvalue estimates for the Laplace- Beltrami operator on negatively curved manifolds of finite volume. The first result is a lower bound on compact manifolds. Theorem. Suppose \(M\) is a compact manifold of dimension \(n\geq 4\) with sectional curvature \(-1\leq K<0\). Let \(\lambda_ 1\) be the first non-zero eigenvalue of the Laplacian on \(M\), then \[ \lambda_ 1\geq{c(n)\over\text{vol}(M)^{d(n)}} \] where \(c(n)\) is a constant depending on \(n\) only, and \(d(n)=6\) for \(n=4,5\), \(d(n)=3\) for \(n=6,7\), and \(d(n)=2\) for \(n\geq 8\). This generalizes earlier results of the thirdly named author and Schoen. Examples show that the Theorem is false in dimension 2 and 3. The second main result is an upper bound on the number of small eigenvalues. Theorem. Suppose \(M\) is a complete manifold of dimension \(n\geq 3\) with sectional curvature \(-a^ 2\leq K\leq -1\), \(a>1\). The number of eigenvalues of the Laplacian on \(M\) in the interval \((0,{1\over 4}(n- 1)^ 2)\) does not exceed \(c(n,a)\cdot\text{vol}(M)\).