On the lowest eigenvalue of Laplace operators with mixed boundary conditions (Q472071)

The interesting paper under review studies the behaviour of the lowest eigenvalue of the Robin-type Laplacean on bounded domains. Precisely, given a bounded smooth domain \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^N\) and a measurable function \(\sigma: \partial\Omega \to \mathbb{R},\) \(\sigma\in L^{N-1}(\partial\Omega),\) the quadratic form \[ \int_\Omega |\nabla u|^2\; dx + \int_{\partial\Omega} \sigma |u|^2\;d\nu \] is closed on \(H^1(\Omega)\) and generates in \(L^2(\Omega)\) a unique self-adjoint operator, the so-called Robin-Laplacean. The author studies the dependence of its lowest eigenvalue \(\lambda_1(\sigma,\Omega)\) on the boundary conditions and its asymptotic behavior in shrinking and expanding domains. In the case of convex domains \(\Omega\) and \(\sigma=\text{const},\) it is proved that \[ \lambda_1(\sigma,\Omega)\sim \dfrac{\sigma}{R_\Omega(1+\sigma R_\Omega)}, \] where \(R_\Omega\) is the inradius of \(\Omega\).