Hamilton-Jacobi theory and the heat kernel on Heisenberg groups (Q1583581)

The purpose of this article and its continuation is to construct the heat kernel of the subelliptic Laplacian on contact manifolds, and to estimate it and find its small time asymptotic behaviour in terms of the subelliptic and sub-Riemannian geometries of the underlying manifold. In the present paper the authors study the situation on Heisenberg groups. After a brief justification of the formula of the heat kernel on \(H_1\) with source at the origin from the point of view of complex Hamiltonian mechanics, a sharp global estimate is derived and the exact small time asymptotics are proved. The next sections are devoted to the generalization to \(H_n\). Thus, the classical and complex actions on \(H_n\) are obtained, the shortest geodesic which yields the Carnot-Caratheodory distance is found and the sharp global estimates and small time asymptotics for the heat kernel on isotropic \(H_n\) are established.