Upper Measure Bounds of Nodal Sets of Solutions to the Bi-Harmonic Equations on $C^{\infty}$ Riemannian Manifolds

Abstract

In this paper, we consider the nodal set of a bi-harmonic function $u$ on an $n$ dimensional $C^{\infty}$ Riemannian manifold $M$, that is, $u$ satisfies the equation $\triangle_M^2u=0$ on $M$, where $\triangle_M$ is the Laplacian operator on $M$. We first define the frequency function and the doubling index for the bi-harmonic function $u$, and then establish their monotonicity formulae and doubling conditions. With the help of the smallness propagation and partitions, we show that, for some ball $B_r(x_0)\subseteq M$ with $r$ small enough, an upper bound for the measure of nodal set of the bi-harmonic function $u$ can be controlled by $N^\alpha$, that is, \mathcal{H}^{n-1}\left(\left\{x\in B_{r/2}(x_0)|u(x)=0\right\}\right)\leq CN^{\alpha}r^{n-1}, where $N=\max\left\{C_0,N(x_0,r)\right\}$, $\alpha$, $C$ and $C_0$ both are positive constants depending only on $n$ and $M$. Here $N(x_0,r)$ is the frequency function of $u$ centered at $x_0$ with radius $r$. Furthermore, we derive that an upper measure for nodal sets of eigenfunctions of the bi-harmonic operator on a $C^{\infty}$ compact Riemannian manifold without boundary can be controlled by $\lambda^\beta$ for the corresponding eigenvalue $\lambda^2$ and some positive constant $\beta$.