Harmonic functions on manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature and linear volume growth (Q1127914)

In 1975, S. T. Yau proved that there are no nonconstant functions of sublinear growth in a manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature. In 1993 and 1995, A. Kasue proved that the space of harmonic functions with polynomial growth is finite dimensional with various additional assumptions, and in 1998, T. Colding and W. Minicozzi proved that the space of such functions is indeed finite dimensional for any complete manifold of nonnegative Ricci curvature. In this paper, we prove that if a complete noncompact manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature and linear volume growth has a nonconstant harmonic function of at most polynomial growth, then the manifold splits isometrically. The proof uses the gradient estimate of Schoen and Yau and previous results of the author.