Eigenfunctions with Infinitely Many Isolated Critical Points

Abstract

We construct a Riemannian metric on the 2D torus, such that for infinitely many eigen-values of the Laplace-Beltrami operator, a corresponding eigenfunction has infinitely many isolated critical points. A minor modification of our construction implies that each of these eigenfunctions has a level set with infinitely many connected components (i.e., a linear combination of two eigenfunctions may have infinitely many nodal domains).