Pleijel's nodal domain theorem for Neumann and Robin eigenfunctions (Q2421911)

The main goal of the presented paper is to extend Pleijel's nodal domain theorem to eigenfunctions of the Laplacian which satisfy a Neumann boundary condition. It is shown that if \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^n\), \(n\ge 2\), is an open, bounded, and connected set with a \(C^{1,1}\) boundary, then \[ \limsup_{k\to +\infty}\frac{\nu^N_k(\Omega)}{k}\le \gamma(n). \] Here, \(\nu^N_k(\Omega)\) denotes the largest possible value for \(\nu(u)\) (the cardinal of the set of nodal domains) when \(u\) is an eigenfunction of the self-adjoint realization of the non-negative Laplacian in \(\Omega\), with the Neumann boundary condition, associated with its eigenvalues \(\mu_k(\Omega)\), arranged in non-decreasing order and counted with multiplicities. The constant \(\gamma(n)\) is defined as follows: \[ \gamma(n)=\frac{2^{n-2}n^2\Gamma(\frac{n}{2})^2}{j^n_{\frac{n}{2}-1,1}}, \] where \(j^n_{\frac{n}{2}-1,1}\) is the smallest positive zero of the Bessel function of the first kind \(J_{\frac{n}{2}-1}\). Note that this result is analogous to the theorem proved by Pleijel in 1956 for the Dirichlet Laplacian. In the paper, it is also shown that the result extends to a class of Robin boundary conditions.