Quantitative characterization of deviations from the hot spots conjecture on convex domains in two-dimensional space forms
In this paper, we study critical points of second Neumann eigenfunctions on convex domains in two-dimensional space forms from three complementary perspectives: spectral and geometric criteria for the absence of interior critical points, quantitative localization of possible critical points, and explicit bounds for the hot spots constant. Precisely, we first establish monotonicity-radius localization principles in $\mathbb S^2$ and $\mathbb H^2$. As a consequence, we obtain a unified diameter criterion for convex domains in these two space forms: if $\mu_2(\Omega)D^2\le j_{1,1}^2,$ then every second Neumann eigenfunction on $\Omega$ has no interior critical points. Moreover, when interior critical points may exist, we derive explicit quantitative location restrictions in terms of the domain diameters in $\mathbb{S}^{2}$ and $\mathbb{H}^{2}$. Finally, we develop an analytic approach to study the \emph{hot spots constant} $\mathfrak{C}(\Omega)$ on convex domains. For planar convex domains, we improve the Euclidean upper bound to $\mathfrak{C}(\Omega)<1.48$. We further obtain the corresponding hot spots constants for convex domains in non-Euclidean space forms, that is, $\mathfrak{C}(\Omega) < 4$ for $\Omega\subset\mathbb{S}^{2}$ contained in a hemisphere; $\mathfrak{C}(\Omega) < 11.2$ for $\Omega\subset\mathbb{H}^{2}$. Our proofs combine the properties of Bessel and Legendre functions, eigenvalue estimates, and Green's identity. Our results quantitatively measure ``how wrong'' the \emph{hot spots conjecture} can be.