Compactness of the resolvent for the Witten Laplacian (Q1745379)

The paper under review deals with the semiclassical Witten Laplacian \[ \Delta^{(0)}_{V,h}=-h^2\Delta_x+|\partial_xV|^2-h\Delta_x V, \] obtained in a standard way from the Witten Laplacians \[ \Delta^{(0)}_{V}=-\Delta_x+|\partial_xV(x)|^2-\Delta_x V(x) \] acting on \(0\)-forms in the real space \(\mathbb{R}^n.\) The author provides sufficient conditions for compactness of the resolvent. These regard the potential itself and involve control of higher order derivatives in terms of the lower ones, as well as control of the positive eigenvalues of the Hessian matrix. The compactness criterion is inspired by similar one for the Fokker--Planck operator, and the technique involved relies on the nilpotent group techniques developed in [ \textit{B. Helffer} and \textit{J. Nourrigat}, Hypoellipticité maximale pour des opérateurs polynômes de champs de vecteurs. Boston-Basel-Stuttgart: Birkhäuser (1985; Zbl 0568.35003)].