Some curious results related to a conjecture of Strohmer and Beaver

Abstract: We study results related to a conjecture formulated by Strohmer and Beaver about optimal Gaussian Gabor frame set-ups. Our attention will be restricted to the case of Gabor systems with standard Gaussian window and rectangular lattices of density 2. Although this case has been fully treated by Faulhuber and Steinerberger, the results in this work are new and quite curious. Indeed, the optimality of the square lattice for the Tolimieri and Orr bound already implies the optimality of the square lattice for the sharp lower frame bound. Our main tools include determinants of Laplace--Beltrami operators on tori as well as special functions from analytic number theory, in particular Eisenstein series, zeta functions, theta functions and Kronecker's limit formula. We note that our results also carry over to energy minimization problems over lattices and a heat distribution problem over flat tori.