No label defined (Q4510896)

For a compact Riemannian manifold the spectrum of the Laplace operator acting on functions forms a discrete set of real numbers \(\lambda_1,\lambda_2,\lambda_3,\ldots\) tending to \(\infty\). If two manifolds have the same spectrum they are called isospectral. By now many examples of non-isometric but isospectral manifolds are known. This paper is a survey on this very active area of research. More specifically, the article covers the following topics: 1. Spectral invariants; 1.1. The heat invariants; 1.2. The geodesic flow and the wave invariants. 2. Spectral rigidity and structure of isospectral sets of metrics; 2.1. Spectrally determined manifolds; 2.2. Structure of isospectral sets. 3. Direct computation of spectra; 3.1. Flat tori; 3.2. Spherical space forms; 3.3. Euclidean domains; 3.4. Isospectral manifolds with different local geometry. 4. Representation theoretic techniques; 4.1. Background on group representations; 4.2. Lie group quotients; 4.3. Sunada's technique; 4.4. Geometry of the isospectral manifolds; 4.5. How general is Sunada's technique? 5. Use of Riemannian submersions. For the entire collection see [Zbl 1069.00010].