Spectral theory of a class of nilmanifolds attached to Clifford modules

We determine the spectrum of the sub-Laplacian on pseudo H -type nilmanifolds and present pairs of isospectral but non-homeomorphic nilmanifolds with respect to the sub-Laplacian. We observe that these pairs are also isospectral with respect to the Laplacian. More generally, our method allows us to construct an arbitrary number of isospectral but mutually non-homeomorphic nilmanifolds. Finally, we present two nilmanifolds of different dimensions such that the short time heat trace expansions of the corresponding sub-Laplace operators coincide up to a term which vanishes to infinite order as time tends to zero.