Asymptotic properties of an optimal principal eigenvalue with spherical weight and Dirichlet boundary conditions

Abstract

We consider a weighted eigenvalue problem for the Dirichlet laplacian in a smooth bounded domain $\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^N$, where the bang-bang weight equals a positive constant $\overline{m}$ on a ball $B\subset\Omega$ and a negative constant $-\underline{m}$ on $\Omega\setminus B$. The corresponding positive principal eigenvalue provides a threshold to detect persistence/extinction of a species whose evolution is described by the heterogeneous Fisher-KPP equation in population dynamics. In particular, we study the minimization of such eigenvalue with respect to the position of $B$ in $\Omega$. We provide sharp asymptotic expansions of the optimal eigenpair in the singularly perturbed regime in which the volume of $B$ vanishes. We deduce that, up to subsequences, the optimal ball concentrates at a point maximizing the distance from $\partial\Omega$.