Maximization of the first nontrivial eigenvalue on the surface of genus two

Abstract

The first nontrivial eigenvalue of the Laplacian can be considered as a functional on the space of all Riemannian metrics of unit volume on a fixed surface. In this paper we prove that for the surface of genus 2 the supremum of this functional is equal to $16\pi$. This provides a positive answer to the conjecture by Jakobson, Levitin, Nadirashvili, Nigam and Polterovich.