A general discrete Wirtinger inequality and spectra of discrete Laplacians

Abstract

We prove an inequality that generalizes the Fan-Taussky-Todd discrete analog of the Wirtinger inequality. It is equivalent to an estimate on the spectral gap of a weighted discrete Laplacian on the circle. The proof uses a geometric construction related to the discrete isoperimetric problem on the surface of a cone. In higher dimensions, the mixed volumes theory leads to similar results, which allows us to associate a discrete Laplace operator to every geodesic triangulation of the sphere and, by analogy, to every triangulated spherical cone-metric. For a cone-metric with positive singular curvatures, we conjecture an estimate on the spectral gap similar to the Lichnerowicz-Obata theorem.