Eigenfunction asymptotics and spectral rigidity of the ellipse

Abstract

This paper is part of a series concerning the isospectral problem for an ellipse. In this paper, we study Cauchy data of eigenfunctions of the ellipse with Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions. Using many classical results on ellipse eigenfunctions, we determine the microlocal defect measures of the Cauchy data of the eigenfunctions. The ellipse has integrable billiards, i.e. the boundary phase space is foliated by invariant curves of the billiard map. We prove that, for any invariant curve $C$, there exists a sequence of eigenfunctions whose Cauchy data concentrates on $C$. We use this result to give a new proof that ellipses are infinitesimally spectrally rigid among $C^{\infty}$ domains with the symmetries of the ellipse.