Original article at: http://www.math.washington.edu/~ejpecp/viewarticle.php?id=1293

Invariant Wedges for a Two-Point Reflecting Brownian Motion and the ``Hot Spots'' Problem

Rami Atar, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology

Abstract

We consider domains D of Rd, dge 2 with the property that there is a wedge Vsubset Rd which is left invariant under all tangential projections at smooth portions of partial D. It is shown that the difference between two solutions of the Skorokhod equation in D with normal reflection, driven by the same Brownian motion, remains in V if it is initially in V. The heat equation on D with Neumann boundary conditions is considered next. It is shown that the cone of elements u of L^2(D) satisfying u(x)-u(y)ge 0 whenever x-yin V is left invariant by the corresponding heat semigroup. Positivity considerations identify an eigenfunction corresponding to the second Neumann eigenvalue as an element of this cone. For d=2 and under further assumptions, especially convexity of the domain, this eigenvalue is simple.

Full text: PDF | PostScript




Copyright for articles published in this journal is retained by the authors, with first publication rights granted to the journal. By virtue of their appearance in this open access journal, articles are free to use, with proper attribution, in educational and other non-commercial settings. The authors of papers published in EJP/ECP retain the copyright. We ask for the permission to use the material in any form. We also require that the initial publication in EJP or ECP is acknowledged in any future publication of the same article. Before a paper is published in the Electronic Journal of Probability or Electronic Communications in Probability we must receive a hard-copy of the copyright form. Please mail it to Philippe Carmona Laboratoire Jean Leray UMR 6629 Universite de Nantes, 2, Rue de la Houssinière BP 92208 F-44322 Nantes Cédex 03 France You can also send it by FAX: (33|0) 2 51 12 59 12 to the attention of Philippe Carmona. You can even send a scanned jpeg or pdf of this copyright form to the managing editor ejpecpme@math.univ-nantes.fr. as an attached file. If a paper has several authors, the corresponding author signs the copyright form on behalf of all the authors.

Original article at: http://www.math.washington.edu/~ejpecp/viewarticle.php?id=1293