Higher eigenvalues and isoperimetric inequalities on Riemannian manifolds and graphs (Q5943874)

The general setting considered in this paper is the following: There is a distance function \(\rho_{\xi}(x)=\rho(\xi,x)\) on a Riemannian manifold of dimension \(n\) which generalizes the geodesic distance of the metric. The distance function should satisfy the properties of a distance and the inequalities \(|\nabla \rho_{\xi}|\leq 1; \Delta \rho_{\xi}^2 \geq 2n\) for the gradient \(\nabla\) and the Laplacian \(\Delta.\) With the help of this distance function an isoperimetric inequality is derived. It generalizes isoperimetric inequalities for Cartan-Hadamard manifolds by \textit{D. Hoffman} and \textit{J. Spruck} [Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 27, 715-727 (1974; Zbl 0295.53025)] and for minimal surfaces by \textit{E. Bombieri, E. De Giorgi} and \textit{M. Miranda} [Arch. Rat. Mech. Anal. 32, 255-267 (1969; Zbl 0184.32803)]. This isoperimetric inequality holds in the more general setting of a weighted manifold. It implies a lower bound for the \(k\)-th Dirichlet eigenvalue of the Laplace operator in a region \(\Omega \subset M.\) In the second part of the paper the discrete case is investigated. The underlying space is a weighted graph with measures on the edge set and the vertex set. To obtain an isoperimetric inequality from a distance function one has to introduce another distance-like function and one needs an assumption on the so-called spring ratio. Then an eigenvalue estimate for the discrete Laplacian is obtained analogous to the smooth case.