Foliation of an Asymptotically Flat End by Critical Capacitors

We construct a foliation of an asymptotically flat end of a Riemannian manifold by hypersurfaces which are critical points of a natural functional arising in potential theory. These hypersurfaces are perturbations of large coordinate spheres, and they admit solutions of a certain over-determined boundary value problem involving the Laplace–Beltrami operator. In a key step we must invert the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator, highlighting the nonlocal nature of our problem.

Analytic semigroups generated by Dirichlet-to-Neumann operators on manifolds

We consider the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator associated to a strictly elliptic operator on the space $$\mathrm {C}(\partial M)$$ C ( ∂ M ) of continuous functions on the boundary $$\partial M$$ ∂ M of a compact manifold $$\overline{M}$$ M ¯ with boundary. We prove that it generates an analytic semigroup of angle $$\frac{\pi }{2}$$ π 2 , generalizing and improving a result of Escher with a new proof. Combined with the abstract theory of operators with Wentzell boundary conditions developed by Engel and the author, this yields that the corresponding strictly elliptic operator with Wentzell boundary conditions generates a compact and analytic semigroups of angle $$\frac{\pi }{2}$$ π 2 on the space $$\mathrm {C}(\overline{M})$$ C ( M ¯ ) .