Courant-sharp Robin eigenvalues for the square and other planar domains

Abstract

This paper is devoted to the determination of the cases where there is equality in Courant's nodal domain theorem in the case of a Robin boundary condition. For the square, we partially extend the results that were obtained by Pleijel, Bérard--Helffer, Helffer--Persson--Sundqvist for the Dirichlet and Neumann problems. After proving some general results that hold for any value of the Robin parameter $h$, we focus on the case when $h$ is large. We hope to come back to the analysis when $h$ is small in a second paper. We also obtain some semi-stability results for the number of nodal domains of a Robin eigenfunction of a domain with $C^{2,α}$ boundary ($α>0$) as $h$ large varies.