Spectral Geometry (Proceedings of Symposia in Pure Mathematics)

This volume contains the proceedings of the International Conference on Spectral Geometry, held July 19-23, 2010, at Dartmouth College, Dartmouth, New Hampshire. Eigenvalue problems involving the Laplace operator on manifolds have proven to be a consistently fertile area of geometric analysis with deep connections to number theory, physics, and applied mathematics. Key questions include the measures to which eigenfunctions of the Laplacian on a Riemannian manifold condense in the limit of large eigenvalue, and the extent to which the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of a manifold encode its geometry. In this volume, research and expository articles, including those of the plenary speakers Peter Sarnak and Victor Guillemin, address the flurry of recent progress in such areas as quantum unique ergodicity, isospectrality, semiclassical measures, the geometry of nodal lines of eigenfunctions, methods of numerical computation, and spectra of quantum graphs. This volume also contains mini-courses on spectral theory for hyperbolic surfaces, semiclassical analysis, and orbifold spectral geometry that prepared the participants, especially graduate students and young researchers, for conference lectures.