Gradient estimates for heat kernels and harmonic functions

By T. Coulhon, Renjin Jiang, Pekka Koskela, Adam S. Sikora. Journal of Functional Analysis, 2017

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Let $(X,d,\mu)$ be a doubling metric measure space endowed with a Dirichlet form $\E$ deriving from a "carre du champ". Assume that $(X,d,\mu,\E)$ supports a scale-invariant $L^2$-Poincare inequality. In this article, we study the following properties of harmonic functions, heat kernels and Riesz transforms for $p\in (2,\infty]$: (i) $(G_p)$: $L^p$-estimate for the gradient of the associated heat semigroup; (ii) $(RH_p)$: $L^p$-reverse Holder inequality for the gradients of harmonic functions; (iii) $(R_p)$: $L^p$-boundedness of the Riesz transform ($p<\infty$); (iv) $(GBE)$: a generalised Bakry-Emery condition. We show that, for $p\in (2,\infty)$, (i), (ii) (iii) are equivalent, while for $p=\infty$, (i), (ii), (iv) are equivalent. Moreover, some of these equivalences still hold under weaker conditions than the $L^2$-Poincare inequality. Our result gives a characterisation of Li-Yau's gradient estimate of heat kernels for $p=\infty$, while for $p\in (2,\infty)$ it is a substantial improvement as well as a generalisation of earlier results by Auscher-Coulhon-Duong-Hofmann [7] and Auscher-Coulhon [6]. Applications to isoperimetric inequalities and Sobolev inequalities are given. Our results apply to Riemannian and sub-Riemannian manifolds as well as to non-smooth spaces, and to degenerate elliptic/parabolic equations in these settings.

Subfields: Applied Mathematics

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