Monopole Floer homology and the spectral geometry of three-manifolds

We refine some classical estimates in Seiberg-Witten theory, and discuss an application to the spectral geometry of three-manifolds. In particular, we show that on a rational homology three-sphere $Y$, for any Riemannian metric the first eigenvalue of the laplacian on coexact one-forms is bounded above explicitly in terms of the Ricci curvature, provided that $Y$ is not an $L$-space (in the sense of Floer homology). The latter is a purely topological condition, and holds in a variety of examples. Performing the analogous refinement in the case of manifolds with $b_1>0$, we obtain a gauge-theoretic proof of an inequality of Brock and Dunfield relating the Thurston and $L^2$ norms of hyperbolic three-manifolds, first proved using minimal surfaces.