The PPW conjecture in curved spaces

Abstract

In Euclidean and Hyperbolic space, and the hemisphere in $S^n$, geodesic balls maximize the gap $\lambda_2 - \lambda_1$ of Dirichlet eigenvalues, amoung domains with fixed $\lambda_1$. We prove an upper bound on $\lambda_2 - \lambda_1$ for domains in manifolds with certain curvature bounds. The inequality is sharp on geodesic balls in spaceforms.