Spectral Asymptotics Revisited

We discuss two heuristic ideas concerning the spectrum of a Laplacian, and we give theorems and conjectures from the realms of manifolds, graphs and fractals that validate these heuristics. The first heuristic concerns Laplacians that do not have discrete spectra: here we discuss the notion of ??spectral mass?? closely related to the ??integrated density of states??, an average of the diagonal of the kernel of the spectral projection operator, and show that this can serve as a substitute for the eigenvalue counting function. The second heuristic is an ??asymptotic splitting law?? that describes the proportions of the spectrum that transforms according to the irreducible representations of a finite group that acts as a symmetry group of the Laplacian. For this to be valid we require the existence of a fundamental domain with relatively small boundary. We also give a version in the case that the symmetry group is a compact Lie group. Many of our results are reformulations of known results, and some are merely conjectures, but there is something to be gained by looking at them together with a unified perspective.