The harmonic measures of Lucy Garnett (Q1400994)

The author makes a careful study of harmonic measures on foliated spaces. This type of measures was introduced by \textit{L. Garnett} [J. Funct. Anal. 51, 285-311 (1983; Zbl 0524.58026)]. Here, for any generalized Laplacian \(\Delta\) along the leaves of any foliated space \(M\), a measure \(m\) on \(M\) is said to be harmonic when \(\int_M\Delta f\cdot m=0\) for all \(f\in C_c(M)\). If \(M\) is compact, the existence of a harmonic probability measure is shown by using the local maximum principle and the Hahn-Banach theorem. Suppose that \(M\) is compact and let \(D_t\), \(t>0\), be the diffusion semigroup defined by \(\Delta\). An important property is that \(D_t\) maps continuous functions on \(M\) to continuous functions. This is a theorem in Garnett's paper, but her arguments seem to work only when there is no holonomy. This gap is corrected in this paper with a different approach, where the Hille-Yosida theorem is the essential tool. Several properties of harmonic measures are reconsidered here. In particular, they can be characterized by their invariance under \(D_t\), and by certain local description. This local description is used to define the modular form, which vanishes if and only if the measure is totally invariant. Inspired by the work of \textit{E. Ghys} [Ann. Math. (2) 141, 387-422 (1995; Zbl 0843.57026)], the author considers the Markov process associated to \(\Delta\), which restricts to the corresponding Brownian motion on each leaf; thus he considers the space \(\Omega(M)\) of paths \(\omega:[0,\infty)\to L\) on all leaves \(L\) of \(M\) endowed with the Wiener measures. The shift operators \(\theta_t(\omega)(s)=\omega(s+t)\) define a semigroup \(\theta=\{\theta_t\mid t\geq 0\}\) of transformations of \(\Omega(M)\), which permits to study the recurrence properties of the foliated space \(M\) as if it was given by a one dimensional flow. For instance, the Wiener measures on the leaves can be combined with any measure \(m\) on \(M\) yielding a measure \(\mu\) on \(\Omega(M)\), which turns out to be \(\theta\)-invariant if and only if \(m\) is harmonic; moreover, in this case, \(m\) is ergodic if and only if \(\mu\) is ergodic with respect to \(\theta\). For harmonic probability measures, the author proves an ergodic theorem, shows that \(D_t\) is mixing on \(L^2(M)\), and obtains the ergodic decomposition in the style of Krylov and Bogoyubov. Finally, the author studies the asymptotic properties of cocycles on \(\Omega(M)\); for instance, any differential form of degree one defines such a cocycle. This is used two show two main results: the first one states that, if \(m\) is an ergodic harmonic measure which is not totally invariant, then the von Neumann algebra of \((M,m)\) contains an essential factor of type III; and the second one shows the existence of resilient leaves under the presence of some transverse quasi-conformal structure. The author announces other applications in forthcoming papers.