Beniamin BOGOSEL

Given a functional dependent on the spectrum of a differential operator, we address the problem of finding a domain which optimizes this functional. PDE solvers might be used to tackle this optimization. It is however computationally expensive. We propose two neural network models which learn the spectrum directly from the geometry of the domain and can be used to optimize the domain from one or more eigenvalues. We investigate two representations. The first encodes the domain through Fourier coefficients and a light MLP, which is efficient on star-shaped geometries, achieving a precision of 0.2%. Through a rescaling of the coefficients the designed models satisfy the scaling law of the eigenvalues. Additionally, averaging the outputs of the trained surrogates over rotations and reflections induces invariance for these transformations. The second is a model that takes the landscape function, the indicator function and the gradient of the landscape function. A Gram-Schmidt process produces orthogonal eigenfunctions as output of the model along with the associated eigenvalues. The landscape model reaches 1% mean relative error on the first ten eigenvalues, compared with 4% for an FNO model. Replacing the landscape by an SDF worsened both prediction and optimization errors. The trained model also generalizes from synthetic shapes to domains given as classical image dataset. The resulting surrogates of both approaches recover classical spectral optima such as the disk for the first eigenvalue or the conjectured minima of higher eigenvalues. This confirms that our models produce accurate differentiable estimates of eigenvalues, which can be used in shape optimization problems involving spectral quantities.

We prove the local version of the Pólya--Szegö conjecture for the torsional rigidity of polygons: for every $n \geq 5$, the regular $n$-gon is a strict local maximizer of torsional rigidity among convex n-gons of prescribed area. Our proof is entirely analytic. It builds on a locally stable proportional triangular covering inspired by Solynin and Zalgaller and an associated weighted Voronoi-type partition, together with a quantitative asymptotic analysis of the loss produced by truncating the overlapping triangles to the partition cells. The result is then obtained by establishing two key ingredients: the optimality of isosceles triangles for mixed torsional rigidity at fixed area and vertex angle, and a strict concavity property of the mixed torsional rigidity of isosceles triangles.

We study torsional rigidity as a function of the labeled vertices of a convex polygon. Starting from the distributed second shape derivative, we derive the Hessian with respect to vertex coordinates. At a regular polygon, dihedral symmetry makes this matrix block circulant in radial-tangential coordinates, reducing its spectrum to the eigenvalues of Hermitian matrices of order two. We also derive an exact second-variation Galerkin identity and guaranteed functional residual majorants. Finite elements approximate the PDE solutions entering the Hessian, and FLINT/Arb provides the interval arithmetic needed for certification. In the scale-invariant setting, we certify exactly four zero eigenvalues generated by similarities and $2n-4$ strictly negative eigenvalues for $5\leq n\leq25$. The regular polygons in this range are therefore strict local maximizers, modulo similarities, of torsional rigidity divided by area squared. The observed Hessian error decreases nearly quadratically with the mesh size; the transmission regularity needed to prove this rate is stated separately as a conjecture.

We consider Pólya's problem of finding, among convex sets of prescribed area, the one with the longest shortest fence, in the polygonal setting, namely when the class of competitors is restricted to polygons with a prescribed number of sides. While it is straightforward to show that, among triangles, the optimal shape is the equilateral one, we prove that symmetry breaking occurs in the case of quadrilaterals: the optimal quadrilateral is not the square. More precisely, we identify it as a specific isosceles trapezium, which is uniquely determined, up to homotheties and rigid motions, by an elementary equation for its base angle. The proof combines analytical arguments and rigorous interval-arithmetic computations.

We study optimization problems for separable functionals of the Euclidean or spherical lengths of dual edge pairs in finite extremal unit-diameter configurations in three dimensions. For a fixed diameter graph, these problems lead to nonconvex constrained optimization of the vertex coordinates. We first prove that a convergent sequence of extremal configurations retains an extremal geometric core after coincident points are merged and vertices incident to at most one diameter are removed. A spherical Crofton argument then gives a sharp lower bound for additive concave functionals, attained by the regular tetrahedron. We also analyze the effect of inserting or deleting dangling vertices. For the sum of products of spherical dual-edge lengths, we obtain an exact supremal reformulation of the three-dimensional Blaschke–Lebesgue area problem. The numerical study uses all 10,644 available extremal configurations with at most 16 vertices. We combine direct evaluation with gradient-based local optimization on each fixed graph and reconstruct the intrinsic diameter graph and its dual pairs after vertex collisions. For every supplied graph, the selected verified endpoint contains a regular tetrahedron. These computations do not certify the global maximum for any fixed graph, but they motivate structural conjectures connecting tetrahedral containment with the Blaschke–Lebesgue problem.