Conic degeneration and the determinant of the Laplacian

We investigate the behavior of various spectral invariants, particularly the determinant of the Laplacian, on a family of smooth Riemannian manifolds which undergo conic degeneration; that is, which converge in a particular way to a manifold with a conical singularity. Our main result is an asymptotic formula for the determinant up to terms which vanish as the degeneration parameter goes to zero. The proof proceeds in two parts; we study the fine structure of the heat trace on the degenerating manifolds via a parametrix construction, and then use that fine structure to analyze the zeta function and determinant of the Laplacian.