Following up on the last session, we again discuss Poincaré inequalities.
Recall that given an open set
and a non-negative weight
the Poincaré constant is the smallest constant
such that
for all
smooth.
Clearly, if
consists of two (or more) connected components
plugging in a piecewise constant function yields that the Poincaré constant is
.
More generally, domains with weak connectivity allow construction of similar functions and therefore have large Poincaré constants.
We will discuss and prove a result attributed to Cheff Cheeger, which relates the Poincaré constant to an isoperimetric quantity known as the Cheeger constant.
The result may be understood as a converse statement to the above observation and be
causally summarized by 'for the Poincaré constant to be large, the domain must have necessarily disconnected geometry'.