Unbounded planar domains whose second nodal line does not touch the boundary (Q2372676)

Let \(\Omega\) be a plane domain (i.e. open connected set in \(\mathbb R^2\)), \(-\Delta ^\Omega_D\) denote the Dirichlet Laplacian acting in \(L^2(\Omega )\), and \(\{\lambda_k(\Omega)\}_{k=1}^\infty\) be the non-decreasing sequence of numbers corresponding to the spectral problem for to the non-negative self-adjoint operator \(-\Delta_D^\Omega \). Each \(\lambda_k(\Omega)\) represents either a discrete eigenvalue or the threshold of the essential spectrum (if \(\Omega\) is not bounded). The authors construct a simply connected unbounded plane domain \(\Omega\) such that: 1) \(\Omega\) is convex and symmetric with respect to two orthogonal straight lines; 2) the nodal line of a second eigenfunction of the operator \(-\Delta_D^\Omega \) does not touch the boundary \(\partial \Omega\). Two following kinds of this domain are examined: a) the nodal line of a second eigenfunction asymptotically approaches to the boundary \(\partial \Omega\) at infinity, but the spectrum of the operator \(-\Delta ^\Omega_D\) is discrete; b) the distance between the nodal line of a second eigenfunction and the boundary \(\partial \Omega\) is a positive number, but the spectrum of the operator \(-\Delta ^\Omega_D\) is not purely discrete.