Finding geometric criteria for negative eigenvalues of the Neumann–Poincaré operator

Abstract

Motivated by a question of Grigori Rozenblum, we study how the geometry of the boundary of a convex domain $Ω\subset\mathbb{R}^3$ affects whether the Neumann–Poincaré operator on $\partialΩ$ has negative eigenvalues. First, we show that a flat face on the boundary of a bounded, convex Lipschitz domain produces an infinite-dimensional negative spectral subspace. For convex domains with $C^{1,α}$ boundary, we bound the number of negative eigenvalues from below by the Dirichlet eigenvalue counting function of a projected patch over which the chords are sufficiently short. A Rellich identity gives a sufficient condition on a defining function to exclude negative eigenvalues. We also report numerical computations, which led us to the theoretical results.