Dirichlet--Neumann bracketing for nonlocal operators

Abstract

We establish Dirichlet--Neumann bracketing for the Dirichlet eigenvalues of $\psi(-\Delta)$ on bounded Lipschitz domains, where $\psi$ is an arbitrary complete Bernstein function. The eigenvalues lie between $\psi$ applied to the corresponding Neumann and Dirichlet eigenvalues of the Laplacian. Both inequalities are strict whenever $\psi$ admits no meromorphic continuation to $\mathbb C \setminus \{0\}$. The proof uses quadratic forms, operator monotonicity, and an analysis of equality in resolvent comparisons. Applying the bracketing to intervals and balls gives a unified proof of simplicity of interval eigenvalues and antisymmetry of second eigenfunctions in balls under the same condition on $\psi$. For fractional powers, these recover results of Fall, Ghimenti, Micheletti and Pistoia for the interval, and of Fall, Feulefack, Temgoua and Weth and, independently, Benedikt, Bobkov, Dhara and Girg for the ball. The argument extends these conclusions to a broader class of nonlocal operators.