An upper bound on the hot spots constant (Q6172761)

The author considers the eigenvalue problem for the negative Laplacian with Neumann boundary conditions for a given bounded and connected domain \(D\) with smooth boundary \(\partial D\) in arbitrary dimensions. The hot spots conjecture of Rauch from 1974 states that the maximum and minimum of the eigenfunction \(u\), corresponding to the first non-trivial Neumann eigenvalue, are attained on the boundary provided that \(D\) is a `simple' geometry. For some special domains, the hot spots conjecture is proven to be valid. However, for special planar domains with at least one hole, one is also able to construct examples that fail the hot spots conjecture. Numerical results in two dimensions also indicate that there is certain factor of how wrong the hot spots conjecture might be. The author of this articles proves \(\max_{x\in D}u(x)\leq 60\cdotp \max_{x\in \partial D} u(x)\) for a bounded and connected domain with smooth boundary \(D\subset \mathbb{R}^d\), \(d\geq 2\). Further, the constant is uniform among all such domains. Note that for higher dimensions the constant can be made smaller. This means, that the hot spots conjecture cannot fail be an arbitrarily large factor. Interestingly, the author is also able to show that this inequality indeed holds for other Neumann eigenvalues provided that their eigenvalue is smaller than the first Dirichlet eigenvalue. Note, however, that in this case the constant might be different.