abstract: I would like to discuss a recent paper written in collaboration with B. Bianchini and M. Rigoli, in which we derive sharp estimates both for the growth of the bottom of the spectrum of the Laplacian, and for the index growth of (stationary) Schrodinger operators. Both these results are achieved through a new technique which allows a careful control of the oscillation of an ordinary differential equations naturally appearing when using radicalization techniques. Time permitting, I would like to discuss some applications of pure geometric flavour.