A Spectral Gap Estimate and Applications

Abstract

We consider the Schrödinger operator

$$ \text{-} \frac{d^{2}}{d x^{2}} + V {\text{on an interval}}~~[a,b]~{\text{with Dirichlet boundary conditions}},$$

where V is bounded from below and prove a lower bound on the first eigenvalue λ ₁ in terms of sublevel estimates: if w _V (y) = |{x ∈ [a, b] : V (x) ≤ y}|, then

$$\lambda_{1} \geq \frac{1}{250} \min\limits_{y > \min V}{\left( \frac{1}{w_{V}(y)^{2}} + y\right)}.$$

The result is sharp up to a universal constant if {x ∈ [a, b] : V(x) ≤ y} is an interval for the value of y solving the minimization problem. An immediate application is as follows: let ${\Omega } \subset \mathbb {R}^{2}$ be a convex domain and let $u:{\Omega } \rightarrow \mathbb {R}$ be the first eigenfunction of the Laplacian − Δ on Ω with Dirichlet boundary conditions on ∂Ω. We prove

$$\| u \|_{L^{\infty}({\Omega})} \lesssim \frac{1}{\text{inrad}({\Omega})} \left( \frac{\text{inrad}({\Omega})}{\text{diam}({\Omega})} \right)^{1/6} \|u\|_{L^{2}({\Omega})},$$

which answers a question of van den Berg in the special case of two dimensions.