Heat kernel asymptotics and the distance function in Lipschitz Riemannian manifolds (Q1384835)

The author is concerned with the heat flow on a manifold \(M\) associated to the Dirichlet form \[ {\mathcal E}(f)= \int_M | \nabla f|^2dm. \] More specifically, he considers the Dirichlet heat kernel \(p_0(t,x,y)\) and the Neumann heat kernel \(p(t,x,y)\). The main goal of the paper is to relate, under minimal hypotheses, the small time asymptotics of these heat kernels to distance functions derived from the metric. Throughout the context of the paper, \(M\) is a Lipschitz Riemannian manifold of dimension \(n\), on which a Borel measure \(m\) is given. It is a very interesting piece of work.