Remarks on Weyl-type bounds for Steklov eigenvalues

Abstract

We prove that, for $n\geq 3$, there is no constant $C_n>0$ depending only on $n$ such that the Steklov eigenvalues $\sigma_k(\Omega)$ satisfy $|\partial\Omega|^{\frac 1{n-1}}\sigma_k(\Omega)\leq C_nk^{\frac1{n-1}}$ for every smooth bounded domain $\Omega\subset\mathbb R^n$ and every $k\geq1 $, providing a negative answer to an open problem posed by Girouard and Polterovich \cite{GiPo}. On the other hand, we prove that there exists a constant $C_n>0$ depending only on $n$ such that $|\Omega|^{\frac 1n}\sigma_k(\Omega)\leq C_nk^{\frac1{n-1}}$ for every smooth bounded domain $\Omega\subset\mathbb R^n$ and every $k\geq 1$. This estimate, combined with the isoperimetric bound of Colbois, El Soufi and Girouard \cite{colboisgirouard_steklov}, implies the bound $|\partial\Omega|^{\frac 1{n-1}}\sigma_k(\Omega)\leq C_nk^{\frac1{n-1}+\frac{n-2}{n(n-1)^2}}$, where the exponent of $k$ turns out to be sharp.