Boundary Spectral Inequalities from Measurable Sets on $W^{2,\infty }$ manifolds and their applications

Abstract

Let $(\mathcal{M},g)$ be a compact connected $W^{2,\infty }$ Riemannian manifold with nonempty boundary and a uniformly elliptic Lipschitz metric. We establish quantitative boundary spectral inequalities for both Dirichlet and Neumann eigenfunctions from arbitrary measurable subsets of $\partial \mathcal{M}\times (-s_0,s_0)$ of positive surface measure. Moreover, we apply the Dirichlet spectral inequality to establish the boundary observability estimate \[ \|u(T)\|_{L^2(\mathcal{M})}^2 \le C \int_J \|\partial_{ν_g}u(x,t)\|^2 \,\mathrm{d}S_g\,\mathrm{d}t . \] where $J\subset \partial \mathcal{M}\times (0,T)$ is measurable and has positive surface--time measure. A localized theorem requiring $W^{2,\infty }$ regularity only near the observed boundary patch is retained as a separate consequence. The proof of the observability inequality combines quantitative continuation from positive-measure boundary sets with low-frequency spectral concentration. This result shows that boundary observability of solutions to the heat equation can also be achieved in $W^{2,\infty }$ domains. Finally, as an application, we prove that measurements of the boundary normal derivative on $J$ uniquely determine the initial state of heat equation. Under an a priori bound in $D(-{\Delta }_{g,D}^{s/2})$, the recovery satisfies a logarithmic stability estimate of optimal order $s/2$.

In this version, we extend the results of the previous submission to the $W^{2,\infty }$-manifold case and discuss some of their applications in inverse problems