Neumann's nodal line may be closed on doubly-connected planar domains

Abstract

We show the existence of planar domains with one hole for which the first non-trivial Neumann eigenfunction has a closed nodal line fully contained inside the domain. This is optimal, as it is known since Pleijel's 1956 result that the nodal line cannot be closed on simply-connected planar domains. A part of the proof is based on the study of convergence of eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of graph-like domains towards metric graphs. We improve the known results of convergence of eigenfunctions, by showing a strong transversal convergence.