Improved upper bounds for the hot spots constant of Lipschitz domains (Q6170116)

The authors consider the first non-trivial eigenvalue and its corresponding eigenfunction of the negative Laplacian on a bounded Euclidean domain with sufficiently regular boundary prescribing homogeneous boundary conditions on it. In the famous conjecture by Rauch, it is postulated that this eigenfunction attains its maximum and minimum on the boundary which is known as the hot spots conjecture. However, for smooth domains with a hole this conjecture is not always true. Recently, Steinerberger introduced the hot spots constant and mathematically showed bounds for it on such smooth domains. In this article, a general formula for the hot spots constant depending on the dimension \(d\) for bounded Lipschitz domains is given. The formula is then used to derive new upper bounds for these domains in \(\mathbb{R}^d\) for small \(d\) and asymptotically large \(d\) significantly improving existing results.