Polymath7 research threads 2: the Hot Spots Conjecture

The previous research thread for the Polymath7 “Hot Spots Conjecture” project has once again become quite full, so it is again time to roll it over and summarise the progress so far.

Firstly, we can update the map of parameter space from the previous thread to incorporate all the recent progress (including some that has not quite yet been completed):

This map reflects the following new progress:

1. We now have (or will soon have) a rigorous proof of the simplicity of the second Neumann eigenvalue for all non-equilateral acute triangles (this is the dotted region), thus finishing off the first part of the hot spots conjecture in all cases.  The main idea here is to combine upper bounds on the second eigenvalue (obtained by carefully choosing trial functions for the Rayleigh quotient), with lower bounds on the sum of the second and third eigenvalues, obtained by using a variety of lower bounds coming from reference triangles such as the equilateral or isosceles right triangle.  This writeup contains a treatment of those triangles close to the equilateral triangle, and it is expected that the other cases can be handled similarly.
2. For super-equilateral triangles (the yellow edges) it is now known that the extreme points of the second eigenfunction occur at the vertices of the base, by cutting the triangle in half to obtain a mixed Dirichlet-Neumann eigenvalue problem, and then using the synchronous Brownian motion coupling method of Banuelos and Burdzy to show that certain monotonicity properties of solutions to the heat equation are preserved.  This fact can also be established via a vector-valued maximum principle.  Details are on the wiki.
3. Using stability of eigenfunctions and eigenvalues with respect to small perturbations (at least when there is a spectral gap), one can extend the known results for right-angled and non-equilateral triangles to small perturbations of these triangles (the orange region).  For instance, the stability results of Banuelos and Pang already give control of perturbed eigenfunctions in the uniform norm; since for right-angled triangles and non-equilateral triangles, the extrema only occur at vertices, and from Bessel expansion and uniform C^2 bounds we know that for any perturbed eigenfunction, the vertices will still be local extrema at least (with a uniform lower bound on the region in which they are extremisers), we conclude that the global extrema will still only occur at vertices for perturbations.
4. Some variant of this argument should also work for perturbations of the equilateral triangle (the dark blue region).  The idea here is that the second eigenfunction of a perturbed equilateral triangle should still be close (in, say, the uniform norm) to some second eigenfunction of the equilateral triangle.  Understanding the behaviour of eigenfunctions nearly equilateral triangles more precisely seems to be a useful short-term goal to pursue next in this project.

But there is also some progress that is not easily representable on the above map.  It appears that the nodal line of the second eigenfunction may play a key role.  By using reflection arguments and known comparison inequalities between Dirichlet and Neumann eigenvalues, it was shown that the nodal line cannot hit the same edge twice, and thus must straddle two distinct edges (or a vertex and an opposing edge).   (The argument is sketched on the wiki.) If we can show some convexity of the nodal line, this should imply that the vertex straddled by the nodal line is a global extremum by the coupled Brownian motion arguments, and the only extremum on this side of the nodal line, leaving only the other side of the nodal line (with two vertices rather than one) to consider.

We’re now also getting some numerical data on eigenvalues, eigenfunctions, and the spectral gap.  The spectral gap looks reasonably large once one is away from the degenerate triangles and the equilateral triangle, which bodes well for an attempt to resolve the conjecture for acute angled triangles by rigorous numerics and perturbation theory.  The eigenfunctions also look reassuringly monotone in various directions, which suggests perhaps some conjectures to make  in this regard (e.g. are eigenfunctions always monotone along the direction parallel to the longest side?).

This isn’t a complete summary of the discussion thus far – other participants are encouraged to summarise anything else that happened that bears repeating here.