Spectral stability of metric-measure Laplacians (Q2317676)

This is an extremely nice article. The authors study on a compact metric-measure space \((X,d,\mu)\) of finite measure the \(\rho\)-Laplacian \(\Delta_{X}^\rho:L^2(X)\to L^2(X)\) for \(\rho>0\) defined by \[ \Delta_{X}^\rho u(x) = \frac{1}{\rho^2 \mu(B_\rho(x))} \int_{B_\rho(x)} (u(x)-u(y))d\mu(y). \] This is a nice candidate for a Laplacian on this general setting because of the following facts: (i) if \(X\) is a Riemannian space of dimension \(n\), then \(\Delta_X^\rho\) converges as \(\rho\to0\) to the Laplace--Beltrami operator associated to \(X\) multiplied by \(\frac{-1}{2(n+2)}\); (ii) if \(X\) is a discrete space, then \(\Delta_X^\rho\) is just the weighted graph Laplacian. The main goal of the article is to study, for a fixed \(\rho>0\), spectral properties of \(\Delta_X^\rho\). It is shown that if \((X_n,d_n,\mu_n)\) is a sequence converging to \((X,d,\mu)\) in the sense of [\textit{K. Fukaya}; Invent. Math. 87, 517--547 (1987; Zbl 0589.58034)] satisfying that \(d\) is a length metric and there is \(\Lambda>0\) such that \(\frac{\mu(B_{r_1}(x))}{\mu(B_{r_2}(x))} \leq (\frac{r_1}{r_2})^\Lambda\) for all \(x\in X\) and \(r_1\geq r_2>0\), then \[ \lambda_k(X,\rho) = \lim_{n\to\infty} \lambda_k(X_n,\rho) \] for all \(k\) such that \(\lambda_k(X,\rho)<\rho^{-2}\). Here, \(\lambda_k(X,\rho)\) and \(\lambda_k(X_n,\rho)\) denote the \(k\)-th eigenvalue of \(\Delta_X^\rho\) and \(\Delta_{X_n}^\rho\) respectively. The paper also contains a very instructive section of examples, gives a Weyl-type estimate, and provides a pleasant introductory section.