Singularities at the contact point of two kissing Neumann balls (Q1678231)

Let \(\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^d\), \(d\geq 2\), be a bounded domain which has a model cuspidal singularity produced by a cavity consisting of two touching balls. That is, \(\Omega\) contains an exterior neighbourhood of two closed balls of possibly different radii which intersect at a single point \(\mathcal{O}\). The authors are interested in the behaviour of the eigenfunctions of the Neumann Laplacian on \(\Omega\) in a neighbourhood of \(\mathcal{O}\). The main result is a comprehensive asymptotic expansion of any eigenfunction about \(\mathcal{O}\) (Theorem 3.7). In lay terms, it means that in dimension \(d=2\), any eigenfunction, together with all its derivatives, remains bounded but possibly discontinuous at \(\mathcal{O}\); whereas for \(d\geq 3\), the gradients have a singularity of order \(O(|x-\mathcal{O}|^{-\alpha})\) as \(x \to \mathcal{O}\) for a dimensional constant \(\alpha = \alpha(d) \in (0,2-\sqrt{2}]\), which is maximal at \(d=3\) and monotonically decreasing to \(0\) as \(d\to\infty\). The proof is based on dimension reduction, a construction of formal asymptotic expansions coming from the limit degenerate differential equation in \(\mathbb{R}^{d-1} \setminus \mathcal{O}\) and their justification using Kondratiev theory (cf. [\textit{V. A. Kondrat'ev}, Trans. Mosc. Math. Soc. 16, 227--313 (1967; Zbl 0194.13405)]). This leads to weighted Sobolev and Hölder estimates on the norms of the remainder terms, from which the dimensionally dependent behaviour results. Generalizations to singularities in more general geometric situations are also discussed.