Manifolds with bounded integral curvature and no positive eigenvalue lower bounds

Abstract: We provide an explicit construction of a sequence of closed surfaces with uniform bounds on the diameter and on $L^p$ norms of the curvature, but without a positive lower bound on the first non-zero eigenvalue of the Laplacian $\lambda_1$. This example shows that the assumption of smallness of the $L^p$ norm of the curvature is a necessary condition to derive Lichnerowicz and Zhong-Yang type estimates under integral curvature conditions.