ON THE EIGENVALUES OF THE BIHARMONIC OPERATOR ON ANNULI

Abstract We show that the fundamental tone of the bilaplacian with Dirichlet or Navier boundary conditions on radially symmetric domains is always simple in dimension $$N\ge 3$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> <mml:mo>≥</mml:mo> <mml:mn>3</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> . In dimension $$N=2$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:mrow> <mml:mi>N</mml:mi> <mml:mo>=</mml:mo> <mml:mn>2</mml:mn> </mml:mrow> </mml:math> , we show that it is simple if the inner radius is sufficiently close to the outer one.