Uniform positivity improving property, Sobolev inequalities, and spectral gaps (Q1270009)

Markov semigroups are investigated by means of Dirichlet forms on Wiener spaces, Riemannian manifolds and loop spaces. Ergodicity conditions and Sobolev type inequalities are employed to estimate the spectral gap for Markov generator. That allows to prove e.g. whether a positive transition density can be associated with a diffusion process on a Riemannian manifold. Logarithmic Sobolev inequalities on connected complete Riemannian manifolds and the case of weighted Wiener measures are discussed as well.