P\'olya's eigenvalue conjecture is false for spheres

Abstract

By comparing the Laplace spectrum of the sphere $\mathbb{S}^n$ to its Weyl function $w(x) = \frac{\omega_n}{(2\pi)^n}|\mathbb{S}^n|x^{n/2}$, we show that no analogue of P\'olya's eigenvalue conjecture holds in general for Riemannian manifolds with positive sectional curvature.