Approximation of the first Steklov–Dirichlet eigenvalue on eccentric spherical shells in general dimensions

Abstract

We study the first Steklov–Dirichlet eigenvalue on eccentric spherical shells in $R^{n+2}$ with $n\ge 1$, imposing the Steklov condition on the outer boundary sphere, denoted by ${\Gamma }_S$, and the Dirichlet condition on the inner boundary sphere. The first eigenfunction admits a Fourier–Gegenbauer series expansion via the bispherical coordinates, where the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator on ${\Gamma }_S$ can be recursively expressed in terms of the expansion coefficients [1]. In this paper, we develop a finite section approach for the Dirichlet-to-Neumann operator to approximate the first Steklov–Dirichlet eigenvalue on eccentric spherical shells. We prove the exponential convergence of this approach by using the variational characterization of the first eigenvalue. Furthermore, based on the convergence result, we propose a numerical computation scheme as an extension of the two-dimensional result in [2] to general dimensions. We provide numerical examples of the first Steklov–Dirichlet eigenvalue on eccentric spherical shells with various geometric configurations.