Rearrangement inequalities and applications to isoperimetric problems for eigenvalues

Francois Hamel, Nikolai Nadirashvili, Emmanuel Russ

Published 2006-08-05Version 1

Let $\Omega$ be a bounded $C^{2}$ domain in $\R^n$, and let $\Omega^{\ast}$ be the Euclidean ball centered at 0 and having the same Lebesgue measure as $\Omega$. Consider the operator $L=-\div(A\nabla)+v\cdot \nabla +V$ on $\Omega$ with Dirichlet boundary condition. We prove that minimizing the principal eigenvalue of $L$ when the Lebesgue measure of $\Omega$ is fixed and when $A$, $v$ and $V$ vary under some constraints is the same as minimizing the principal eigenvalue of some operators $L^*$ in the ball $\Omega^*$ with smooth and radially symmetric coefficients. The constraints which are satisfied by the original coefficients in $\Omega$ and the new ones in $\Omega^*$ are expressed in terms of some distribution functions or some integral, pointwise or geometric quantities. Some strict comparisons are also established when $\Omega$ is not a ball.