Existence and geometric structure of metrics on surfaces which extremize eigenvalues (Q2015844)

The author has published numerous results regarding sharp upper bounds on the first eigenvalue of a surface (with or without boundary) in terms of area or boundary length and the surface topology. This article contains a result on a new coarse upper bound for non-orientable surfaces with boundary. It is mostly a survey article presenting recent progress made by the author, in the field of differential and spectral geometry. The problem that may be of interest to most researchers in this field, regardless of their particular area, may be the very first one that is exposed: ``To determine a metric \(g\) on a given closed smooth surface \(M^2\), normalized so that \(A(g)=1\), with the largest first eigenvalue''. As the author himself expresses it, ``another way to pose the question is the problem of finding a sharp upper bound on the eigenvalue \(\lambda_1\) in terms of the area and topology of a surface \(M\)''. The article should be of interest to all researchers in the field, and is written in a manner that makes it accessible to junior researchers and advanced graduate students.