On the fundamental tone of the \(p\)-Laplacian on Riemannian manifolds and applications (Q2235838)

This note considers the infimum \(\lambda_{1,p}(\Omega)\) of the \(p\)-analogue of the Rayleigh quotient on a bounded domain \(\Omega\) in a Riemannian manifold \(M\), where the competing functions are in \(W^{1,p}_0(\Omega)\). It extends to \(p\neq 2\) results of [\textit{A. R. Veeravalli}, Comment. Math. Helv. 78, No. 4, 884--888 (2003; Zbl 1060.53045)]. The main result, that extends Veeravali's Prop.~1, states that if there is a smooth real-valued function \(f\) on \(M\) such that \(|\nabla f|\leq a\) and \(\mathrm{div}(|\nabla f|^{p-2}\nabla f)\geq b\) pointwise, where \(a\) and \(b\) are positive constants, then \(\lambda_{1,p}(\omega)\geq b^p/(p^pa^{p(p-1)})\). By choosing for \(f\) the distance to the center of a geodesic ball, and assuming the sectional curvature of \(M\) to be bounded above by a negative number, a sharpening of a result by [\textit{G. Poliquin}, Contemp. Math. 630, 349--366 (2014; Zbl 1372.35208)] is obtained. A generalization to \(p\neq 2\) of Veeravalli's results on product spaces is also presented.