Eigenvalues of the Laplacian with density

Abstract

Let $(M,g)$ be a compact Riemannian manifold with a boundary of class $\mathscr{C}^{1}$. We are interested in the spectrum of the weighted Laplacian on $M$ with Neumann boundary conditions. More precisely, given $\rho$ and $\sigma$ two positive functions on $M$, we study the eigenvalues of the equation $-\operatorname{div}(\sigma \nabla u)=\lambda\rho u$. Inspired by a recent work of B. Colbois and A. El Soufi, we investigate upper bounds for the eigenvalues in the case where $\sigma=\rho^{\alpha}$, $\alpha>0$. We show that $\alpha = \frac{n-2}{n}$ plays a critical role in the estimation of the spectrum when the total mass of $\rho$ is fixed.