Conformal upper bounds for the eigenvalues of the Laplacian and Steklov problem

In this paper, we find upper bounds for the eigenvalues of the Laplacian in the conformal class of a compact Riemannian manifold (M, g). These upper bounds depend only on the dimension and a conformal invariant that we call “min-conformal volume”. Asymptotically, these bounds are consistent with the Weyl law and improve previous results by Korevaar and Yang and Yau. The proof relies on the construction of a suitable family of disjoint domains providing supports for a family of test functions. This method is interesting for itself and powerful. As a further application of the method we obtain an upper bound for the eigenvalues of the Steklov problem in a domain with C1 boundary in a complete Riemannian manifold in terms of the isoperimetric ratio of the domain and the conformal invariant that we introduce. © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved