Quantitative Obata's theorem (Q6185894)

The classical Lichnerowicz spectral gap ensures that for a closed \(n\)-dimensional Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\) with \(\operatorname{Ric}_g\geq (N-1)g\), the first eigenvalue \(\lambda_1\) of the Laplace-Beltrami operator satisfies \(\lambda_1\geq N\). In addition, Obata proved that \(\lambda_1=N\) if and only if \((M,g)\) is isometric to the \(N\)-dimensional unit sphere \(\mathbb S^N\). It is well known that any first eigenfunction of \(\mathbb S^N\) is of the form \(u=\sqrt{N+1}\cos d_p\) for some \(p\in \mathbb S^N\), where \(d_p\) denotes the Riemannian distance from \(p\) (e.g.\ the \(i\)th element of the canonical basis of \(\mathbb R^N\), \(p=e_i\), gives the coordinate function \(u=x_{i}\)). The main result of the article under review is a quantitative spectral gap comparing the corresponding first eigenfunctions with those of the model space \(\mathbb S^N\). More precisely, if \(\operatorname{Ric}_g\geq (N-1)g\) and \(u:M\to\mathbb R\) is a first eigenfunction with \(\|u\|_{L^2(M)}=1\), then there is \(p\in M\) such that \[ \|u-\sqrt{N+1}\cos d_p\|_{L^2(M)}\leq C(N)\; \big(\lambda_1-N)^{\textrm{O}(1/N)}. \] The above formula is proved ``with tools of optimal transport tailored to study (possibly nonsmooth) metric measure spaces satisfying Ricci curvature lower bounds and dimensional upper bounds in the synthetic sense, the so-called \(\textrm{CD}(K,N)\) spaces introduced in [\textit{K.-T. Sturm}; Acta Math. 196, No. 1, 65--131 (2006; Zbl 1105.53035); Acta Math. 196, No. 1, 133--177 (2006; Zbl 1106.53032); \textit{J. Lott} and \textit{C. Villani}; Ann. Math. (2) 169, No. 3, 903--991 (2009; Zbl 1178.53038)].''