Semicontinuity of eigenvalues under intrinsic flat convergence (Q745567)

In [Acta Math. 185, No. 1, 1--80 (2000; Zbl 0984.49025)], \textit{L. Ambrosio} and \textit{B. Kirchheim} introduced the concept of currents on metric spaces. The flat distance was originally introduced by Whitney for submanifolds of the Euclidean space and extended to integral currents by \textit{H. Federer} and \textit{W. H. Fleming} in [Ann. Math. (2) 72, 458--520 (1960; Zbl 0187.31301)]. Similar to how the Gromov-Hausdorff distance is related to the Hausdorff distance, the intrinsic flat distance between two manifolds is determined as the infimum of the flat distance between isometric embeddings of the manifolds taken over all isometric embeddings into all possible common metric spaces. A Laplace operator is defined in a natural way on Riemannian manifolds and its properties, such eigenvalues and eigenfunctions, give some information on the geometry of a manifold. It is natural to ask whether spectra of the Laplace operator on manifolds converge when the manifolds do. The spectrum of the Laplace operator varies continuously under \(C^2\)-convergence of manifolds. In [Invent. Math. 87, 517--547 (1987; Zbl 0589.58034)], \textit{K. Fukaya} constructed examples demonstrating that under Gromov-Hausdorff convergence, the eigenvalues of the Laplace operator need not be continuous, and showed that with uniform bounds on the sectional curvature and the diameter, the eigenvalues of the Laplace operator on manifolds are continuous under measured Gromov-Hausdorff convergence. In this paper, the author studies semicontinuity of eigenvalues under intrinsic flat convergence. The first result of the paper states that if \(M_i\) \((i=1,2,\dots)\) and \(M\) are closed, oriented Riemannian manifolds such that as \(M_i\) converges to \(M\) in the intrinsic flat sense, and \(\text{Vol}(M_i)\to\text{Vol}(M)\), then, for \(k=1,2,\dots\), \(\limsup\limits_{i\to\infty}\lambda_k(M_i)\leq\lambda_k(M)\), where \(\lambda_k\) is the \(k\)-th eigenvalue of the Laplace operator. Further, the author uses the local Finsler structure, the tangential derivatives of Lipschitz functions, and the theory of rectifiable metric spaces to define a Dirichlet energy of Lipschitz functions \(f\) on an integral current \(T\) by \(E_T(f)=\int_X|df|^2d\|T\|\), where \(|df|\) is the tangential derivative of \(f\) and \(\|T\|\) is an associated mass measure of \(T\). If \(M\) is not Riemannian but an integral current, then the author defines min-max values based on the normalized energy and shows that when integral current spaces converge in the intrinsic flat sense without loss of volume, the min-max values of the limit space are larger than or equal to the upper limit of the min-max values of the currents in the sequence. In particular, the infimum of the normalized energy is semicontinuous. It is also shown that if \(T\) is an integral current on a \(w^*\)-separable dual Banach space \(Y\), the objects in the completion of bounded Lipschitz functions under the Sobolev norm \(\|\cdot\|_{W^{1,2}(\|T\|)}=\|\cdot\|_{L^{2}(\|T\|)}+E_T(\cdot)\) are also \(\|T\|\) almost everywhere tangentially differentiable. If \(T\) is an integral current on a complete metric space \(X\), then \(W^{1,2}(\|T\|)\) can be interpreted in a natural way as a subset of \(L^2(\|T\|)\). Next, the author shows that the energy \(E_T\) is lower semicontinuous. Also, it is shown that \(f\in W^{1,2}(\|T\|)\) if and only if it has a minimal relaxed gradient, and that the norm of the tangential derivative is equal to the minimal relaxed gradient. Finally, when the involved integral currents are supported on an infinitesimally Hilbertian rectifiable metric space, the author defines an unbounded linear self-adjoint operator on their rectifiable sets and shows that semicontinuity under intrinsic flat convergence holds for eigenvalues below the essential spectrum, if the total volume of the spaces converges as well.