The Cauchy process and the Steklov problem

Let Xt be a Cauchy process in Rd, d⩾1. We investigate some of the fine spectral theoretic properties of the semigroup of this process killed upon leaving a domain D. We establish a connection between the semigroup of this process and a mixed boundary value problem for the Laplacian in one dimension higher, known as the “Mixed Steklov Problem.” Using this we derive a variational characterization for the eigenvalues of the Cauchy process in D. This characterization leads to many detailed properties of the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions for the Cauchy process inspired by those for Brownian motion. Our results are new even in the simplest geometric setting of the interval (−1,1) where we obtain more precise information on the size of the second and third eigenvalues and on the geometry of their corresponding eigenfunctions. Such results, although trivial for the Laplacian, take considerable work to prove for the Cauchy processes and remain open for general symmetric α-stable processes. Along the way we present other general properties of the eigenfunctions, such as real analyticity, which even though well known in the case of the Laplacian, are not available for more general symmetric α-stable processes.