Small order asymptotics of the Dirichlet eigenvalue problem for the fractional Laplacian

Abstract: In this article, we study the asymptotics of Dirichlet eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the fractional Laplacian $(-\Delta)^s$ in bounded open Lipschitz sets in the small order limit $s \to 0^+$. While it is easy to see that all eigenvalues converge to $1$ as $s \to 0^+$, we show that the first order correction in these asymptotics is given by the eigenvalues of the logarithmic Laplacian operator, i.e., the singular integral operator with symbol $2\log|\xi|$. By this we generalize a result of Chen and the third author which was restricted to the principal eigenvalue. Moreover, we show that $L^2$-normalized Dirichlet eigenfunctions of $(-\Delta)^s$ corresponding to the $k$-th eigenvalue are uniformly bounded and converge to the set of $L^2$-normalized eigenvalues of the logarithmic Laplacian. In order to derive these spectral asymptotics, we need to establish new uniform regularity and boundary decay estimates for Dirichlet eigenfunctions for the fractional Laplacian. As a byproduct, we also obtain corresponding regularity properties of eigenfunctions of the logarithmic Laplacian.