Some equivalent gradient and Harnack inequalities of a diffusion semigroup are presented for the curvature-dimension condition of the associated generator. As applications, the first eigenvalue, the log-Harnack inequality, the heat kernel estimates, and the HWI inequality are derived by using the curvature-dimension condition. The transportation inequality for diffusion semigroups is also investigated.
Let $P_t$ be the (Neumann) diffusion semigroup $P_t$ generated by a weighted Laplacian on a complete connected Riemannian manifold $M$ without boundary or with a convex boundary. It is well known that the Bakry-Emery curvature is bounded below by a positive constant $\ll>0$ if and only if $$W_p(μ_1P_t, μ_2P_t)\le \e^{-\ll t} W_p (μ_1,μ_2),\ \ t\ge 0, p\ge 1 $$ holds for all probability measures $μ_1$ and $μ_2$ on $M$, where $W_p$ is the $L^p$ Wasserstein distance induced by the Riemannian distance. In this paper, we prove the exponential contraction $$W_p(μ_1P_t, μ_2P_t)\le c\e^{-\ll t} W_p (μ…
By using a general version of curvature condition, derivative inequalities are established for a large class of subelliptic diffusion semigroups. As applications, the Harnack/cost-entropy/cost-variance inequalities for the diffusion semigroups, and the Poincaré/log-Sobolev inequalities for the associated Dirichlet forms in the symmetric case, are derived. Our results largely generalize and partly improve the corresponding ones obtained recently in [BB].
It is now well known that curvature conditions à la Bakry-Emery are equivalent to contraction properties of the heat semigroup with respect to the classical quadratic Wasserstein distance. However, this curvature condition may include a dimensional correction which up to now had not induced any strenghtening of this contraction. We first consider the simplest example of the Euclidean heat semigroup, and prove that indeed it is so. To consider the case of a general Markov semigroup, we introduce a new distance between probability measures, based on the semigroup, and adapted to it. We prove tha…
Dimension-independent Harnack inequalities are derived for a class of subordinate semigroups. In particular, for a diffusion satisfying the Bakry-Emery curvature condition, the subordinate semigroup with power $α$ satisfies a dimension-free Harnack inequality provided $α\in(1/2, 1)$, and it satisfies the log-Harnack inequality for all $α\in (0,1).$ Some infinite-dimensional examples are also presented.
Matrix concentration inequalities provide information about the probability that a random matrix is close to its expectation with respect to the $l_2$ operator norm. This paper uses semigroup methods to derive sharp nonlinear matrix inequalities. In particular, it is shown that the classic Bakry-Émery curvature criterion implies subgaussian concentration for "matrix Lipschitz" functions. This argument circumvents the need to develop a matrix version of the log-Sobolev inequality, a technical obstacle that has blocked previous attempts to derive matrix concentration inequalities in this setting…
To study the reflecting diffusion processes on manifolds with boundary, some new curvature operators are introduced by using the Bakry-Emery curvature and the second fundamental form. As applications, the gradient estimates, log-Harnack inequality and Poincaré/log-Sobolev inequalities are investigated for the Neumann semigroup on manifolds with boundary.
Let $L_t:=Δ_t +Z_t $, $t\in [0,T_c)$ on a differential manifold equipped with time-depending complete Riemannian metric $(g_t)_{t\in [0,T_c)}$, where $Δ_t$ is the Laplacian induced by $g_t$ and $(Z_t)_{t\in [0,T_c)}$ is a family of $C^{1,1}$-vector fields. We first present some explicit criteria for the non-explosion of the diffusion processes generated by $L_t$; then establish the derivative formula for the associated semigroup; and finally, present a number of equivalent semigroup inequalities for the curvature lower bound condition, which include the gradient inequalities, transportation-co…
A quantum Markov semigroup can be represented via classical diffusion processes solving a stochastic Schrödinger equation. In this paper we first prove that a quantum Markov semigroup is irreducible if and only if classical diffusion processes are total in the Hilbert space of the system. Then we study the relationship between irreducibility of a quantum Markov semigroup and properties of these diffusions such as accessibility, the Lie algebra rank condition, and irreducibility. We prove that all these properties are, in general, weaker than irreducibility of the quantum Markov semigroup, neve…
A unified treatment is given of some results of H. Donnelly-P. Li and L. Schwartz concerning the behaviour of heat semigroups on open manifolds with given compactifications, on one hand, and the relationship with the behaviour at infinity of solutions of related stochastic differential equations on the other. A principal tool is the use of certain covers of the manifold: which also gives a non-explosion test. As a corollary we obtain known results about the behaviour of Brownian motions on a complete Riemannian manifold with Ricci curvature decaying at most quadratically in the distance functi…
We study two equivalent characterizations of the strong Feller property for a Markov process and of the associated sub-Markovian semigroup. One is described in terms of locally uniform absolute continuity, whereas the other uses local Orlicz-ultracontractivity. These criteria generalize many existing results on strong Feller continuity and seem to be more natural for Feller processes. By establishing the estimates of the first exit time from balls, we also investigate the continuity of harmonic functions for Feller processes which enjoy the strong Feller property.
In this article, functional inequalities for diffusion semigroups on Riemannian manifolds (possibly with boundary) are established, which are equivalent to pinched Ricci curvature, along with gradient estimates, $L^p$-inequalities and log-Sobolev inequalities. These results are further extended to differential manifolds carrying geometric flows. As application, it is shown that they can be used in particular to characterize general geometric flow and Ricci flow by functional inequalities.
We derive sharp, local and dimension dependent hypercontractive bounds on the Markov kernel of a large class of diffusion semigroups. Unlike the dimension free ones, they capture refined properties of Markov kernels, such as trace estimates. They imply classical bounds on the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck semigroup and a dimensional and refined (transportation) Talagrand inequality when applied to the Hamilton-Jacobi equation. Hypercontractive bounds on the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck semigroup driven by a non-diffusive Lévy semigroup are also investigated. Curvature-dimension criteria are the main tool in the an…
We prove a global Li-Yau inequality for a general Markov semigroup under a curvature-dimension condition. This inequality is stronger than all classical Li-Yau type inequalities known to us. On a Riemannian manifold, it is equivalent to a new parabolic Harnack inequality, both in negative and positive curvature, giving new subsequents bounds on the heat kernel of the semigroup. Under positive curvature we moreover reach ultracontractive bounds by a direct and robust method.
It is well known that Nash-type inequalities for symmetric Dirichlet forms are equivalent to on-diagonal heat kernel upper bounds for the associated symmetric Markov semigroups. In this paper, we show that both imply (and hence are equivalent to) off-diagonal heat kernel upper bounds under some mild assumptions. Our approach is based on a new generalized Davies' method. Our results extend that of \cite{CKS} for Nash-type inequalities with power order considerably and also extend that of \cite{Gri} for second order differential operators on a complete non-compact manifold.
The dimension free Harnack inequality for the heat semigroup is established on the $\RCD(K,\infty)$ space, which is a non-smooth metric measure space having the Ricci curvature bounded from below in the sense of Lott-Sturm-Villani plus the Cheeger energy being quadratic. As its applications, the heat semigroup entropy-cost inequality and contractivity properties of the semigroup are studied, and a strong enough Gaussian concentration implying the log-Sobolev inequality is also shown as a generalization of the one on the smooth Riemannian manifold.
The curvature-dimension condition is a generalization of the Bochner inequality to weighted Riemannian manifolds and general metric measure spaces. It is now known to be equivalent to evolution variational inequalities for the heat semigroup, and quadratic Wasserstein distance contraction properties at different times. On the other hand, in a compact Riemannian manifold, it implies a same-time Wasserstein contraction property for this semigroup. In this work we generalize the latter result to metric measure spaces and more importantly prove the converse: contraction inequalities are equivalent…
We give a new, two-step approach to prove existence of finite invariant measures for a given Markovian semigroup. First, we identify a convenient auxiliary measure and then we prove conditions equivalent to the existence of an invariant finite measure which is absolutely continuous with respect to it. As applications, we give a short proof for the result of Lasota and Szarek on invariant measures and we obtain a unifying generalization of different versions for Harris ergodic theorem which provides an answer to an open question of Tweedie. We show that for a nonlinear SPDE on a Gelfand triple,…
In this article, exponential contraction in Wasserstein distance for heat semigroups of diffusion processes on Riemannian manifolds is established under curvature conditions where Ricci curvature is not necessarily required to be non-negative. Compared to the results of Wang (2016), we focus on explicit estimates for the exponential contraction rate. Moreover, we show that our results extend to manifolds evolving under a geometric flow. As application, for the time-inhomogeneous semigroups, we obtain a gradient estimate with an exponential contraction rate under weak curvature conditions, as w…
Let $M$ be a compact Riemannian manifold with boundary $\pp M$ and $L= \DD+Z$ for a $C^1$-vector field $Z$ on $M$. Several equivalent statements, including the gradient and Poincaré/log-Sobolev type inequalities of the Neumann semigroup generated by $L$, are presented for lower bound conditions on the curvature of $L$ and the second fundamental form of $\pp M$. The main result not only generalizes the corresponding known ones on manifolds without boundary, but also clarifies the role of the second fundamental form in the analysis of the Neumann semigroup. Moreover, the Lévy-Gromov isoperimetri…
The Harnack inequality established in [13] for generalized Mehler semigroup is improved and generalized. As applications, the log-Harnack inequality, the strong Feller property, the hyper-bounded property, and some heat kernel inequalities are presented for a class of O-U type semigroups with jump. These inequalities and semigroup properties are indeed equivalent, and thus sharp, for the Gaussian case. As an application of the log-Harnack inequality, the HWI inequality is established for the Gaussian case. Perturbations with linear growth are also investigated.
We introduce the class of bounded variation (BV) functions in a general framework of strictly local Dirichlet spaces with doubling measure. Under the 2-Poincaré inequality and a weak Bakry-Émery curvature type condition, this BV class is identified with the heat semigroup based Besov class $\mathbf{B}^{1,1/2}(X)$ that was introduced in our previous paper. Assuming furthermore a quasi Bakry-Émery curvature type condition, we identify the Sobolev class $W^{1,p}(X)$ with $\mathbf{B}^{p,1/2}(X)$ for $p>1$. Consequences of those identifications in terms of isoperimetric and Sobolev inequalities wit…
We study curvature dimension inequalities for the sub-Laplacian on contact Riemannian manifolds. This new curvature dimension condition is then used to obtain: 1) Geometric conditions ensuring the compactness of the underlying manifold (Bonnet-Myers type results); 2) Volume estimates of metric balls; 3) Gradient bounds and stochastic completeness for the heat semigroup generated by the sub-Laplacian; 4) Spectral gap estimates.
We introduce a family of multivariate continuous-time pure birth and pure death chains, with birth and death rates defined in terms of the generalized binomial coefficients for multiplicity free actions. The state spaces for some of the introduced processes are some sets of partitions (equivalently, Young diagrams). The chains turn out to be the classical Markov processes obtained by restricting Biane's quantum Ornstein-Uhlenbeck semigroups to commutative C*-algebras related to Gelfand pairs built on Heisenberg groups.
The Sobolev regularity of invariant measures for diffusion processes is proved on non-smooth metric measure spaces with synthetic lower Ricci curvature bounds. As an application, the symmetrizability of semigroups is characterized, and the stability of invariant measures is proved under perturbations of drifts and the underlying spaces in the sense of the measured Gromov convergence.
By using a coupling method, an explicit log-Harnack inequality with local geometry quantities is established for (sub-Markovian) diffusion semigroups on a Riemannian manifold (possibly with boundary). This inequality as well as the consequent $L^2$-gradient inequality, are proved to be equivalent to the pointwise curvature lower bound condition together with the convexity or absence of the boundary. Some applications of the log-Harnack inequality are also introduced.
We show that the Liouville property and Reiter's condition are equivalent for semigroupoids. This result applies to semigroups as well as semigroup actions. In the special case of measured groupoids and locally compact groupoids, our result proves Kaimanovich's conjecture of the equivalence of amenability and the Liouville property.
We consider the dynamics of semi-hyperbolic semigroups generated by finitely many rational maps on the Riemann sphere. Assuming that the nice open set condition holds it is proved that there exists a geometric measure on the Julia set with exponent $h$ equal to the Hausdorff dimension of the Julia set. Both $h$-dimensional Hausdorff and packing measures are finite and positive on the Julia set and are mutually equivalent with Radon-Nikodym derivatives uniformly separated from zero and infinity. All three fractal dimensions, Hausdorff, packing and box counting are equal. It is also proved that …
After establishing some new global facts (like a measure theoretic structure theorem and approximation results) about complex-valued functions with bounded variation on arbitrary noncompact Riemannian manifolds, we extend results of Miranda/the second author/Paronetto/Preunkert and of Carbonaro/Mauceri on the heat semigroup characterization of the variation of L^1-functions to a class of Riemannian manifolds with possibly unbounded from below Ricci curvature.
Aim of this paper is to provide new characterizations of the curvature dimension condition in the context of metric measure spaces (X,d,m). On the geometric side, our new approach takes into account suitable weighted action functionals which provide the natural modulus of K-convexity when one investigates the convexity properties of N-dimensional entropies. On the side of diffusion semigroups and evolution variational inequalities, our new approach uses the nonlinear diffusion semigroup induced by the N-dimensional entropy, in place of the heat flow. Under suitable assumptions (most notably th…
A Feynman formula is a representation of a solution of an initial (or initial-boundary) value problem for an evolution equation (or, equivalently, a representation of the semigroup resolving the problem) by a limit of $n$-fold iterated integrals of some elementary functions as $n\to\infty$. In this note we obtain some Feynman formulae for a class of semigroups associated with Feller processes. Finite dimensional integrals in the Feynman formulae give approximations for functional integrals in some Feynman--Kac formulae corresponding to the underlying processes. Hence, these Feynman formulae gi…
