Geometric inequalities between Dirichlet and Neumann eigenvalues

Abstract

Comparing Neumann and Dirichlet eigenvalues of the Laplacian on a bounded domain $\Omega\subseteq\Rbb^n$ is a topic that goes back at least to the work of P\'olya \cite{polya}. We study the effect of the isoperimetric ratio of $\Omega$ on the number $N(\Omega)$ of Neumann eigenvalues that do not exceed the first Dirichlet eigenvalue, proving that $N(\Omega)$ is bounded above and below by a constant multiple of the isoperimetric ratio in the case of convex domains. We also show that these estimates do not hold in the non-convex setting, addressing questions of Cox-MacLachlan-Steeves \cite{coxetal} and Freitas \cite{freitas}. Despite these counterexamples, we find similar estimates for polygonal domains in $\Rbb^2$ as well as certain families of fiber bundles that asymptotically collapse onto their base spaces, the motivating examples being tubular neighborhoods of submanifolds.