Tracking eigenvalues to the frontier of moduli space I: Convergence and spectral accumulation

We study the limiting behavior of eigenfunctions/eigenvalues of the Laplacian of a family of Riemannian metrics that degenerates on a hypersurface. Our results generalize earlier work concerning the degeneration of hyperbolic surfaces

Generic spectral simplicity of polygons

We study the Laplace operator with Dirichlet or Neumann boundary condition on polygons in the Euclidean plane. We prove that almost every simply connected polygon with at least four vertices has simple spectrum. We also address the more general case of geodesic polygons in a constant curvature space form.Comment: length reduced to 6 pages, 1 figur

Hyperbolic triangles without embedded eigenvalues

We consider the Neumann Laplacian acting on square-integrable functions on a triangle in the hyperbolic plane that has one cusp. We show that the generic such triangle has no eigenvalues embedded in its continuous spectrum. To prove this result we study the behavior of the real-analytic eigenvalue branches of a degenerating family of triangles. In particular, we use a careful analysis of spectral projections near the crossings of these eigenvalue branches with the eigenvalue branches of a model operator.Comment: 65 pages, 4 figures, to appear in Annals of Mathematics http://annals.math.princeton.edu/articles/1159

The maximum number of systoles for genus two Riemann surfaces with abelian differentials

In this article, we provide bounds on systoles associated to a holomorphic $1$-form $\omega$ on a Riemann surface $X$. In particular, we show that if $X$ has genus two, then, up to homotopy, there are at most $10$ systolic loops on $(X,\omega)$ and, moreover, that this bound is realized by a unique translation surface up to homothety. For general genus $g$ and a holomorphic 1-form $\omega$ with one zero, we provide the optimal upper bound, $6g-3$, on the number of homotopy classes of systoles. If, in addition, $X$ is hyperelliptic, then we prove that the optimal upper bound is $6g-5$.Comment: 41 page