Sharp Cheeger-Buser type inequalities in $ \mathsf{RCD}(K,\infty)$ spaces

Abstract

The goal of the paper is to sharpen and generalise bounds involving the Cheeger's isoperimetric constant $h$ and the first eigenvalue $λ_{1}$ of the Laplacian. A celebrated lower bound of $λ_{1}$ in terms of $h$, $λ_{1}\geq h^{2}/4$, was proved by Cheeger in 1970 for smooth Riemannian manifolds. An upper bound on $λ_{1}$ in terms of $h$ was established by Buser in 1982 (with dimensional constants) and improved (to a dimension-free estimate) by Ledoux in 2004 for smooth Riemannian manifolds with Ricci curvature bounded below. The goal of the paper is two fold. First: we sharpen the inequalities obtained by Buser and Ledoux obtaining a dimension-free sharp Buser inequality for spaces with (Bakry-Émery weighted) Ricci curvature bounded below by $K\in {\mathbb R}$ (the inequality is sharp for $K>0$ as equality is obtained on the Gaussian space). Second: all of our results hold in the higher generality of (possibly non-smooth) metric measure spaces with Ricci curvature bounded below in synthetic sense, the so-called $ \mathsf{RCD}(K,\infty)$ spaces.