Exact sum rules for inhomogeneous drums Original Research Article

We derive general expressions for the sum rules of the eigenvalues of drums of arbitrary shape and arbitrary density, obeying different boundary conditions. The formulas that we present are a generalization of the analogous formulas for one dimensional inhomogeneous systems that we have obtained in a previous paper. We also discuss the extension of these formulas to higher dimensions. We show that in the special case of a density depending only on one variable the sum rules of any integer order can be expressed in terms of a single series. As an application of our result we derive exact sum rules for the homogeneous circular annulus with different boundary conditions, for a homogeneous circular sector and for a radially inhomogeneous circular annulus with Dirichlet boundary conditions.