Liouville heat kernel: regularity and bounds (Q330702)

Liouville quantum gravity (LQG) is a family of random Riemannian metrics on a two-dimensional space, that are conjectured to arise as scaling limits of random planar maps weighted with a model of statistical physics at critical temperature. They are formally viewed as given by the metric tensor \(e^{\gamma X(x)}dx^2\), with \(\gamma \in [0, 2]\) and \(X\) a two-dimensional Gaussian free field (GFF). Since the GFF is a random distribution, and not a function, this definition is only formal. To study properties of LQG, one possibility is to study geometric quantities that can be defined without rigorously making sense of the above tensor, yet still reflect geometric properties of the metric, such as the volume form (defined by \textit{J.-P. Kahane} [Ann. Sci. Math. Qué. 9, 105--150 (1985; Zbl 0596.60041)]) and the Liouville Brownian motion (defined by \textit{C. Garban} et al. [Ann. Probab. 44, No. 4, 3076--3110 (2016; Zbl 1393.60015)]). This work studies the heat kernel associated to the Liouville Brownian motion on the torus. The main results are regularity estimates, as well as upper and lower bounds on the heat kernel, with non-matching exponents that are conjectured by the authors to be non-optimal. Related results, including an improvement of the upper bound, have been obtained by \textit{S. Andres} and \textit{N. Kajino} [Probab. Theory Relat. Fields 166, No. 3--4, 713--752 (2016; Zbl 1353.60073)].