P\'olya's conjecture for thin products

Abstract

Let $\Omega \subset \mathbb R^d$ be a bounded Euclidean domain. According to the famous Weyl law, both its Dirichlet eigenvalue $\lambda_k(\Omega)$ and its Neumann eigenvalue $\mu_k(\Omega)$ have the same leading asymptotics $w_k(\Omega)=C(d,\Omega)k^{2/d}$ as $k \to \infty$. G. P\'olya conjectured in 1954 that each Dirichlet eigenvalue $\lambda_k(\Omega)$ is greater than $w_k(\Omega)$, while each Neumann eigenvalue $\mu_k(\Omega)$ is no more than $w_k(\Omega)$. In this paper we prove P\'olya's conjecture for thin products, i.e. domains of the form $(a\Omega_1) \times \Omega_2$, where $\Omega_1, \Omega_2$ are Euclidean domains, and $a$ is small enough. We also prove that the same inequalities hold if $\Omega_2$ is replaced by a Riemannian manifold, and thus get P\'olya's conjecture for a class of ``thin" Riemannian manifolds with boundary.