Sharp upper bounds for Steklov eigenvalues on warped products

Abstract

We obtain sharp isoperimetric-type upper bounds for Steklov eigenvalues on warped products whose bases are compact Riemannian manifolds with boundary and whose fibres are closed Riemannian manifolds. These bounds involve the volume of the warped product and of its boundary, as well as the eigenvalues of the Laplace operator on the fibre and the Steklov eigenvalues of the base. After separation of variables, these bounds are obtained by comparison with auxiliary Helmholtz-Steklov problems on the base involving weighted Laplace operators naturally induced by the warping function. We also study the effect of various natural geometric constraints, such as the warping function being identically equal to one on the boundary. The proofs make use of various spectral approximation methods, including homogenisation on manifolds when the fibres are one-dimensional.