Vacuum energy as spectral geometry.
Under an appropriate oscillating behaviour either at zero or at infinity of the nonlinear term, the existence of a sequence of weak solutions for an eigenvalue Dirichlet problem on the Sierpiński gasket is proved. Our approach is based on variational methods and on some analytic and geometrical properties of the Sierpiński fractal. The abstract results are illustrated by explicit examples.
Small amplitude vibrations of an elastic structure completely filled by a fluid are considered. Describing the structure by displacements and the fluid by its pressure field one arrives at a non-selfadjoint eigenvalue problem. Taking advantage of a Rayleigh functional we prove that its eigenvalues can be characterized by variational principles of Rayleigh, minmax and maxmin type.