Linear growth harmonic functions on a complete manifold (Q1118171)

The authors consider the space of harmonic functions of linear growth on complete manifold M with nonnegative Ricci curvature. Let r(y) be the distance from a point y of M to some fixed point x. Yau conjectured that the space of harmonic functions on M satisfying \(| f(y)| \leq O(r^ p(y))\) (the growth of order p) is of finite dimension which is less than or equal to the dimension of the space of homogeneous harmonic polynomials of degree less than or equal to p in \({\mathbb{R}}^ n\). This conjecture for \(p=1\) follows from the theorem obtained by the authors: ``Let the volume \(V(B_ x(r))\) of the geodesic ball of radius r centered at the fixed point x satisfy \(V(B_ x(r))=O(r^ k).\) Then the dimension of the space of linear growth harmonic functions on M must be less than or equal to k.''