The second Yamabe invariant

Let $(M,g)$ be a compact Riemannian manifold of dimension $n \geq 3$. We define the second Yamabe invariant as the infimum of the second eigenvalue of the Yamabe operator over the metrics conformal to $g$ and of volume 1. We study when it is attained. As an application, we find nodal solutions of the Yamabe equation

The supremum of conformally covariant eigenvalues in a conformal class

Let (M,g) be a compact Riemannian manifold of dimension >2. We show that there is a metric h conformal to g and of volume 1 such that the first positive eigenvalue the conformal Laplacian with repect to h is arbitrarily large. A similar statement is proven for the first positive eigenvalue of the Dirac operator on a spin manifold of dimension >1

Relations between threshold constants for Yamabe type bordism invariants

In the work of Ammann, Dahl and Humbert it has turned out that the Yamabe invariant on closed manifolds is a bordism invariant below a certain threshold constant. A similar result holds for a spinorial analogon. These threshold constants are characterized through Yamabe-type equations on products of spheres with rescaled hyperbolic spaces. We give variational characterizations of these threshold constants, and our investigations lead to an explicit positive lower bound for the spinorial threshold constants

The first conformal Dirac eigenvalue on 2-dimensional tori

Let M be a compact manifold with a spin structure \chi and a Riemannian metric g. Let \lambda_g^2 be the smallest eigenvalue of the square of the Dirac operator with respect to g and \chi. The \tau-invariant is defined as \tau(M,\chi):= sup inf \sqrt{\lambda_g^2} Vol(M,g)^{1/n} where the supremum runs over the set of all conformal classes on M, and where the infimum runs over all metrics in the given class. We show that \tau(T^2,\chi)=2\sqrt{\pi} if \chi is ``the'' non-trivial spin structure on T^2. In order to calculate this invariant, we study the infimum as a function on the spin-conformal moduli space and we show that the infimum converges to 2\sqrt{\pi} at one end of the spin-conformal moduli space.Comment: published version (typos removed, bibliography updated

Function Spaces on Singular Manifolds

It is shown that most of the well-known basic results for Sobolev-Slobodeckii and Bessel potential spaces, known to hold on bounded smooth domains in $\mathbb{R}^n$, continue to be valid on a wide class of Riemannian manifolds with singularities and boundary, provided suitable weights, which reflect the nature of the singularities, are introduced. These results are of importance for the study of partial differential equations on piece-wise smooth domains.Comment: 37 pages, 1 figure, final version, augmented by additional references; to appear in Math. Nachrichte

Synthesis of electro-optic modulators for amplitude modulation of light

Electro-optical modulator realizes voltage transfer function in synthesizing birefringent networks. Choice of the voltage transfer function is important, the most satisfactory optimizes the modulator property