Extending our previous work on eigenvalues of closed surfaces and work of Otal and Rosas, we show that a complete Riemannian surface $S$ of finite type and Euler characteristic $\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}(S)<0$ has at most $-\unicode[STIX]{x1D712}(S)$ small eigenvalues.

We prove that on any compact manifold $M^{n}$ with boundary, there exists a conformal class $C$ such that for any Riemannian metric $g\in C$ of unit volume, the first positive eigenvalue of the Neumann Laplacian satisfies ${\it\lambda}_{1}(M^{n},g)<n\,\text{Vol}(S^{n},g_{\text{can}})^{2/n}$. We also prove a similar inequality for the first positive Steklov eigenvalue. The proof relies on a handle decomposition of the manifold. We also prove that the conformal volume of $(M,C)$ is $\text{Vol}(S^{n},g_{\text{can}})$, and that the Friedlander–Nadirashvili invariant and the Möbius volume of $M$ are equal to those of the sphere. If $M$ is a domain in a space form, $C$ is the conformal class of the canonical metric.

Cet article présente des minorations universelles de la première valeur propre non nulle du laplacien des formes différentielles sur les domaines euclidiens ou hémisphériques convexes ou les hypersurfaces euclidiennes convexes.