Quantitative Resolvent and Eigenfunction Stability for the Faber-Krahn Inequality

Abstract: For a bounded open set $\Omega \subset \mathbb{R}^n$ with the same volume as the unit ball, the classical Faber-Krahn inequality says that the first Dirichlet eigenvalue $\lambda_1(\Omega)$ of the Laplacian is at least that of the unit ball $B$. We prove that the deficit $\lambda_1(\Omega)- \lambda_1(B)$ in the Faber-Krahn inequality controls the square of the distance between the resolvent operator $(-\Delta_\Omega)^{-1}$ for the Dirichlet Laplacian on $\Omega$ and the resolvent operator on the nearest unit ball $B(x_\Omega)$. The distance is measured by the operator norm from $C^{0,\alpha}$ to $L^2$. As a main application, we show that the Faber-Krahn deficit $\lambda_1(\Omega)- \lambda_1(B)$ controls the squared $L^2$ norm between $k$th eigenfunctions on $\Omega$ and $B(x_\Omega)$ for every $k \in \mathbb{N}.$ In both of these main theorems, the quadratic power is optimal.