Contractibility of manifolds by means of stochastic flows (Q1741788)

Consider a smooth connected complete Riemannian manifold $M$, a probability space $(\Omega,\mathcal{T},\mathbb{P})$, and a $C^1$ stochastic deformation (i.e., homotopic to $Id_M\,$; usually, such a stochastic deformation arises as solution to some stochastic differential equation on $M$) $\xi \equiv \xi(x,t,\omega) : M\times \mathbb{R}_+\times\Omega\to M,$ whose differentials $T_x\xi(x,t,\omega)(v)$ constitute a stochastic deformation as well, and such that $\liminf_{t\to\infty} \mathbb{P}\big(\xi(x_0,t,\cdot)\in K_0 \big) >0$ for some point $x_0\in M$ and some compact subset $K_0\subset M$. Suppose moreover that $\int_0^\infty \sup_{x\in K} \mathbb{E}\big(\|T_x\xi(x,t,\cdot)\|\big)\, dt <\infty.$ Then $\pi_1(M)=0$. \par Furthermore, if the stronger condition $\int_0^\infty \mathbb{E}\Big(\sup_{x\in K}\, \|T_x\xi(x,t,\cdot)\|\Big) dt <\infty$ holds, then $\pi_n(M)=0$ for all $n\in\mathbb{N}^*$, i.e., $M$ is contractible. \par The first part of this result is a slight improvement of a result by \textit{X.-M. Li} [Probab. Theory Relat. Fields 100, No. 4, 417--428 (1994; Zbl 0815.60049)], and the second is new.