Spectral convergence of Riemannian manifolds (Q1335554)

The authors use the heat kernel to introduce a spectral distance on the set of compact Riemannian manifolds. They establish some basic properties of this distance on the class \({\mathcal M} (n,D, \kappa)\) of compact Riemannian manifolds of dimension \(n\) with diameters at most \(D\) and Ricci curvature at least \(-(n-1) \kappa^ 2\). They show that the topology given by the spectral distance is finer than that of the Gromov- Hausdorff distance and that \({\mathcal M} (n,D, \kappa)\) is pre-compact. They identify the boundary elements of \({\mathcal M} (n,D, \kappa)\). They show that the continuity and convergence of eigenfunctions holds in a certain sense with respect to the spectral distance. Their investigation uses Riemannian manifolds endowed with weight functions and the associated operators rather than Riemannian manifolds and the Laplace operators.