Yet another heat semigroup characterization of BV functions on Riemannian manifolds (Q6090102)

A classical result by de Giorgi establishes that \(u \in L^1 (\mathbb{R}^n)\) is of bounded variation if, and only if \[ \limsup_{t \to 0^+} \|\nabla(e^{t \Delta} u)\|_{L^1} < \infty \] (see Teorema I at [\textit{E. De Giorgi}, Ann. Mat. Pura Appl. (4) 36, 191--213 (1954; Zbl 0055.28504)]). The goal of the article under review is to generalize this characterization to the context of functions defined on Riemannian manifolds. Before proceeding to its main result, let us precisely state the considered context and recall the definition of functions with bounded variation. Let \(\mathbb{M}\) be a compact connected Riemannian manifold and let \(\mu\) denote its associated Riemannian volume measure. Recall that \(f \in L^1 (\mathbb{M}, \mu)\) is said to be of \emph{bounded variation}, denoted \(f \in BV (\mathbb{M})\), when its \emph{total variation} is finite, i.e., \[ \|Df\| (\mathbb{M}) := \sup \left\{ \int_{\mathbb M} f~\mathrm{div}~\varphi~\mathrm{d}\mu : \varphi \in \Gamma (T^* \mathbb{M}), \|\varphi\| \leq 1 \right\} < \infty. \] The main result of the paper reads as follows. Theorem. Let \(f \in L^1(\mathbb{M}, \mu)\). Then \(f \in BV(\mathbb{M})\) if, and only if, \[ \limsup_{t \to 0^+} \frac{1}{\sqrt{t}} \int_{\mathbb M} P_t(|f - f(x)|)(x) \mathrm{d}\mu(x) < \infty, \] where \(P_t := e^{t \Delta}\) and \(\Delta\) denotes the Laplace--Beltrami operator. Moreover, when the latter limsup is finite, the limit exists and satisfies \[ \lim_{t \to 0^+} \frac{1}{\sqrt{t}} \int_{\mathbb M} P_t(|f - f(x)|)(x) \mathrm{d}\mu(x) = \frac{2}{\sqrt{\pi}} \|Df\| (\mathbb{M}) . \] Two independent proofs are presented for the theorem. The first one employs tools from stochastic differential geometry and martingale theory, but presents the drawback of only proving the second limit under the additional hypothesis that \(f\) is in the Sobolev space \(W^{1, 2} (\mathbb{M})\). The second proof is analytic, drawing inspiration from the arguments in [\textit{J. Bourgain} et al., in: Optimal control and partial differential equations. In honour of Professor Alain Bensoussan's 60th birthday. Proceedings of the conference, Paris, France, December 4, 2000. Amsterdam: IOS Press; Tokyo: Ohmsha. 439--455 (2001; Zbl 1103.46310)].