Extremal determinants of Laplace-Beltrami operators for rectangular tori (Q2223505)

In this nice self-contained paper the author solves the optimization problem for the determinant of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on \(2\)-tori obtained by factorizing the complex plane with rectangular lattices and having unit area. More precisely, let \(\Lambda\subset{\mathbb C}\) be a lattice in the complex plane and consider the corresponding \(2\)-torus \(T^2_\Lambda:={\mathbb C}/\Lambda\) with inherited standard flat Riemannian metric \(g\) and standard orientation from the complex plane. Assume that \((T^2_\Lambda ,g)\) has unit area. Let \(\Delta_\Lambda\) denote the Laplace-Beltrami operator on \((T^2_\Lambda ,g)\) and \(\mathrm{det}' \Delta_\Lambda\) its zeta-function-regularized determinant. The author's main result is the following (see Theorem 1.1 in the article): For \(\alpha\in{\mathbb R}_+\) consider the rectangular unit-area \(2\)-torus \(T^2_\alpha :={\mathbb C}/(\Lambda =\alpha^{-1/2}{\mathbb Z}\oplus i\alpha^{1/2}{\mathbb Z})\) and the corresponding Laplace--Beltrami operator \(\Delta_\alpha\). Then \[ \mathrm{det}'\Delta_\alpha\leqq\alpha\vert\eta (i\alpha )\vert^4\leqq \vert\eta (i)\vert^4\approx 0.34830... \] (here \(\eta\) is the Dedekind eta function) and the maximum is attained at \(\alpha =1\) i.e. when \(\Lambda\) is the square lattice. It is interesting to note that this maximum is only a slightly smaller than the available global maximum in the general case i.e. when \textit{all} (not only rectangular) lattices are considered: In this case \textit{B. Osgood} et al. [J. Funct. Anal. 80, No. 1, 148--211 (1988; Zbl 0653.53022)] found that \[ \mathrm{det}'\Delta_\Lambda\leqq\frac{\sqrt{3}}{2}\left\vert \eta\left(\frac{1+i\sqrt{3}}{2}\right)\right\vert^4\approx 0.35575... \] and the global maximum is achieved when \(\Lambda\) is the regular hexagon lattice. One can furthermore demonstrate that beyond this global maximum the only other extremal point is the author's square lattice point and it is a saddle point. Consequently within the whole family of lattices there still exists a \(1\)-parameter family of lattices along which the square lattice yields a local maximum of the determinant.