Formal Statement
More formally, the drum is conceived as an elastic membrane whose boundary is clamped. It is represented as a domain D in the plane. Denote by λn the Dirichlet eigenvalues for D: that is, the eigenvalues of the Dirichlet problem for the Laplacian:
Two domains are said to be isospectral (or homophonic) if they have the same eigenvalues. The term "homophonic" is justified because the Dirichlet eigenvalues are precisely the fundamental tones that the drum is capable of producing: they appear naturally as Fourier coefficients in the solution wave equation with clamped boundary.
Therefore the question may be reformulated as: what can be inferred on D if one knows only the values of λn? Or, more specifically: are there two distinct domains that are isospectral?
Related problems can be formulated for the Dirichlet problem for the Laplacian on domains in higher dimensions or on Riemannian manifolds, as well as for other elliptic differential operators such as the Cauchy–Riemann operator or Dirac operator. Other boundary conditions besides the Dirichlet condition, such as the Neumann boundary condition, can be imposed. See spectral geometry and isospectral as related articles.
Read more about this topic: Hearing The Shape Of A Drum
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