On an algorithm for two-term spectral asymptotic formulas

Abstract

In the book [Yu. Safarov and D. Vassiliev, The asymptotic distribution of eigenvalues of partial differential operators, Amer. Math. Soc., Providence, RI, 1997], a key and central ``algorithm'' was established, by which the coefficients of two-term asymptotic expansions of the eigenvalue counting functions can be explicitly calculated for many partial differential operators under an additional geometric assumption. In this paper, we give a counter-example to this ``algorithm'' by discussing the case of elastic eigenvalues. This implies that the most conclusions in the above book written by Yu. Safarov and D. Vassiliev are fundamentally wrong because they are based on the erroneous ``algorithm''.