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 geometrical quantity in damped wave equations on a square

The energy in a square membrane $\Omega$ subject to constant viscous damping on a subset $\omega\subset \Omega$ decays exponentially in time as soon as $\omega$ satisfies a geometrical condition known as the "Bardos-Lebeau-Rauch" condition. The rate $\tau(\omega)$ of this decay satisfies $\tau(\omega)= 2 \min(-\mu(\omega), g(\omega))$ (see Lebeau [Math. Phys. Stud. 19 (1996) 73-109]). Here $\mu(\omega)$ denotes the spectral abscissa of the damped wave equation operator and $g(\omega)$ is a number called the geometrical quantity of $\omega$ and defined as follows. A ray in $\Omega$ is the trajectory generated by the free motion of a mass-point in $\Omega$ subject to elastic reflections on the boundary. These reflections obey the law of geometrical optics. The geometrical quantity $g(\omega)$ is then defined as the upper limit (large time asymptotics) of the average trajectory length. We give here an algorithm to compute explicitly $g(\omega)$ when $\omega$ is a finite union of squares

Optimal transportation between hypersurfaces bounding some strictly convex domains

Let $M,N$ be two smooth compact hypersurfaces of $\mathbb{R}^n$ which bound strictly convex domains equipped with two absolutely continuous measures $\mu$ and $\nu$ (with respect to the volume measures of $M$ and $N$). We consider the optimal transportation from $\mu$ to $\nu$ for the quadratic cost. Let $(\phi:m \to \mathbb{R},\psi:N \to \mathbb{R})$ be some functions which achieve the supremum in the Kantorovich formulation of the problem and which satisfy $$\psi (y) = \inf_{z\in M} \Bigl( \frac{1}{2}|y-z|^2 -\varphi(z)\Bigr); \varphi (x)=\inf_{z\in N} \Bigl( \frac{1}{2}|x-z|^2 -\psi(z)\Bigr).$$ Define for $y \in N$, $$\varphi^\Box(y) = \sup_{z\in M} \Bigl( \frac{1}{2}|y-z|^2 -\varphi(z)\Bigr).$$ In this short paper, we exhibit a relationship between the regularity of $\varphi^\Box$ and the existence of a solution to the Monge problem

About the mass of certain second order elliptic operators

Let $(M,g)$ be a closed Riemannian manifold of dimension $n \geq 3$ and let $f\in C^{\infty}(M)$, such that the operator $P_f:= \Delta_g+f$ is positive. If $g$ is flat near some point $p$ and $f$ vanishes around $p$, we can define the mass of $P_f$ as the constant term in the expansion of the Green function of $P_f$ at $p$. In this paper, we establish many results on the mass of such operators. In particular, if f:= \frac{n-2}{4(n-1)} \scal_g, i.e. if $P_f$ is the Yamabe operator, we show the following result: assume that there exists a closed simply connected non-spin manifold $M$ such that the mass is non-negative for every metric $g$ as above on $M$, then the mass is non-negative for every such metric on every closed manifold of the same dimension as $M$.Comment: 39 page

Harmonic spinors and local deformations of the metric

Let (M,g) be a compact Riemannian spin manifold. The Atiyah-Singer index theorem yields a lower bound for the dimension of the kernel of the Dirac operator. We prove that this bound can be attained by changing the Riemannian metric g on an arbitrarily small open set.Comment: minor changes, to appear in Mathematical Research Letter