Spectral gap on Riemannian path space over static and evolving manifolds (Q1693257)

Let \((\mathcal{M},g)\) be a complete smooth Riemannian manifold, endowed with a \(C^1\) vector field \(Z\). The authors consider the Bakry-Emery Ricci curvature \(\mathrm{Ric}^Z:= \mathrm{Ric} -\nabla Z\) and the Witten Laplacian \(L:=\Delta + Z\). Their basis hypothesis is the bound \(k_1\leq \mathrm{Ric}^Z\leq k_2\) between two real constants \(-\infty < k_1\leq k_2<\infty\). Then they also consider the \(L\)-diffusion process \((X^x_t)\) with drift \(Z\) started form \(x\in \mathcal{M}\), which has horizontal lift \(u_t^x\in O\mathcal{M}\) (yielding the associated stochastic parallel transport along diffusion paths) and solves the equation: for some Brownian motion \((B_s)\) and \(T>0\): \[ X_t^x = x + \sqrt{2}\int_0^t u_s^x\circ dB_s + \int_0^t Z(X_t^x) ds \text{ for } 0\leq t\leq T. \] The Malliavin derivative \(D_t\) defines the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck operator \(\mathcal{L}\), by: \[ \langle \mathcal{L} F,F\rangle := \mathbb{E}\left[\int_0^T\big|D_tF \big|^2\big(X^x_{[0,T]}\big) dt\right] \text{ for any smooth cylindrical functional \(F\)}. \] The \(L\)-diffusion \((X^x_t)\) is assumed not to explode. Then the first main result of the authors is some explicit positive lower bound for the spectral gap of \(\mathcal{L}\). They also specify the asymptotic expansion of their bound, up to order 2, as \(T\searrow 0\). This improves a preceding result by Shizan Fang and Bo Wu, which was limited to \(k_1+k_2\geq 0\). Their method is inspired by recent estimates by Naber and Halhofer. Then the authors consider the case of an evolving manifold \((\mathcal{M},g_t)_{\{0\leq t<T_c\}}\) and of an evolving generator \(L_t:= \Delta_t+Z_t\), again assumed to be non-explosive. \(\mathrm{Ric}^Z\) is here replaced by \(\mathcal{R}\mathrm{ic}^Z_t := \mathrm{Ric}_t -\nabla^tZ_t -\frac12\partial_tg_t\), which is assumed to satisfy \(k_1(t)\leq \mathcal{R}\mathrm{ic}^Z_t\leq k_2(t)\), for continuous real functions \(k_1,k_2\). Then the second main result is a log-Sobolev inequality \[ \mathbb{E}\big[F^2\log F^2\big] - \mathbb{E}\big[F^2\big] \log\mathbb{E}\big[F^2\big] \leq 2H(T,k_1,k_2)\int_0^T \mathbb{E}\big[|D_t F|_t^2\big] dt \] and a Poincaré inequality \[ \mathbb{E}\big[(F-\mathbb{E}(F))^2\big] \leq H(T,k_1,k_2)\int_0^T \mathbb{E}\big[|D_t F|_t^2\big] dt , \] for some explicit bound \(H(T,k_1,k_2)\). Of course the latter is equivalent to the spectral gap-lower bound \(H(T,k_1,k_2)^{-1}\).