A heat kernel lower bound for integral Ricci curvature (Q1885564)

Let \((M,g)\) be a Riemannian manifold, and for \(x \in M\) let \(r(x)\) be the smallest eigenvalue of the Ricci tensor \(\text{Ric}:T_xM \to T_xM\). Define \[ k(p,\lambda,R) = \sup_{x \in M}\Big(\int_{B(x,R)}| \min\{0,r(x)-(n-1)\lambda\}| ^p\,dx\Big)^{1/p}, \] as well as \[ \bar{k}(p,\lambda,R) = \sup_{x \in M}\Big(\frac{1}{\text{vol}\, B(x,R)}\cdot\int_{B(x,R)}| \min\{0,r(x)-(n-1)\lambda\}| ^p\,dx\Big)^{1/p}. \] Let \(E(x,y,t)\) denote the heat kernel of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on the closed manifold \((M,g)\), and for real \(\lambda\) let \(E_{\lambda}(\overline{x,y},t)\) denote the heat kernel on the model space of constant curvature \(\lambda\). The following result is proved: Let \(n > 0\), \(p > \frac{n}{2}\), and \(\lambda \leq 0\), \(D > 0\). Then there exists an explicitly computable \(\varepsilon_0 = \varepsilon(n,p,\lambda,D) > 0\) such that, for any \((M,g)\) with \(\text{diam}\,M \leq D\), \(\dim M = n\), and for \(\bar{k}(p,\lambda,D) \leq \varepsilon_0\) and \(k(p,\lambda,D) \leq 1\), \[ E(x,y,t) \geq E_{\lambda}(\overline{x,y},t)-(k(p,\lambda,D))^{1/2}C(n,p,\lambda,D)(t^{-(n+1)/2}+1) \] for any \(x,y \in M\) and \(t > 0\).