Principal eigenvalue of mixed problem for the fractional Laplacian: moving the boundary conditions (Q1745639)

Let \(\Omega\) be a \(C^{1,1}\) domain in \(\mathbb R^N\), \(\Omega^c\) the complement, and let \(D\), \(N\) be open subsets of \(\Omega^c\) such that \(D\cap N=\emptyset\) and \(|\mathbb R^N- (\Omega\cup D\cup N)|=0\) with \(|D|>0\) and \(|N|>0\) (\(|A|\) is the Lebesgue measure of \(A\)). The authors study the nonlocal eigenvalue problem with mixed boundary conditions \[ (-\Delta)^su= \lambda(D)u\text{ in }\Omega, \quad u= 0\text{ on }D,\quad N_su=0\text{ on }N, \] where \(0<s<1\) in the fractional operator and \(N_s\) denotes the nonlocal boundary derivative (in the sense of \textit{S. Dipierro} et al. [Rev. Mat. Iberoam. 33, No. 2, 377--416 (2017; Zbl 1371.35322)]). The first main result (Theorem 1.4) states that if \(D_k\), \(N_k\subset\Omega^c\) are such that \(D_k\cap N_k=\emptyset\) and \(|\mathbb{R}^N-(\Omega\cup D_k\cup N_k)|=0\), then \(\lim_k\,\lambda_1(D)= \lambda_1(\Omega^c)\) if and only if the sets \(\{N_k\}\) diffuse to \(0\) in a precise technical sense. The second main result (Theorem 1.5) says that, for \(0<s<1/2\), \(\lambda_1(D_k)\) goes to \(0\) with \(k\) if and only if \(\lim_k|D_k\cap B_R|= 0\) for any \(R>0\).