On the behavior of $1$-Laplacian Ratio Cuts on nearly rectangular domains

Abstract: Given a connected set $\Omega_0 \subset \mathbb{R}<sup>2$, define a sequence of sets $(\Omega_n)<em>{n=0}<sup>{\infty}$ where $\Omega</em>{n+1}$ is the subset of $\Omega_n$ where the first eigenfunction of the (properly normalized) Neumann $p-$Laplacian $$-\Delta^{(p)} \phi = \lambda_1 |\phi|^{p-2} \phi$$ is positive (or negative). For $p=1$, this is also referred to as the Ratio Cut of the domain. We conjecture that, unless $\Omega_0$ is an isosceles right triangle, these sets converge to the set of rectangles with eccentricity bounded by 2 in the Gromov-Hausdorff distance as long as they have a certain distance to the boundary $\partial \Omega_0$. We establish some aspects of this conjecture for $p=1$ where we prove that (1) the 1-Laplacian spectral cut of domains sufficiently close to rectangles of a given aspect ratio is a circular arc that is closer to flat than the original domain (leading eventually to quadrilaterals) and (2) quadrilaterals close to a rectangle of aspect ratio $2$ stay close to quadrilaterals and move closer to rectangles in a suitable metric. We also discuss some numerical aspects and pose many open questions.