Splitting theorems on complete Riemannian manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature (Q1995579)

The classical splitting theorem due to Cheeger-Gromoll says that if a complete noncompact Riemannian manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature contains a line, then it is isometric to a product space of a real line and a Riemannian manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature. In this paper, the authors achieve some local and global splitting results on complete Riemannian manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature through the analysis of some pointwise inequalities of Modica type which hold for every bounded solution to a semilinear Poisson equation. Let \((M^n, g)\) be a complete connected smooth open Riemannian manifold of dimension \(n \ge 2\) and consider the nonlinear Poisson equation over \(M\), \[ -\Delta u + f(u) = 0,\tag{1} \] where \(f = F'\) is the first derivative of a function \(F \in C^2(\mathbb{R})\). When \(M=\mathbb{R}^n\), \textit{L. Modica} [Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 38, 679--684 (1985; Zbl 0612.35051)] proved the following pointwise gradient estimate for bounded solutions \(u \in C^3(\mathbb{R}^n)\) with \(F\ge 0\): \[ \frac12 |\nabla u|^2(x) \le F(u(x)),\quad \forall x \in\mathbb{R}^n.\tag{2}\] This Modica's estimate also holds [\textit{A. Farina} and \textit{E. Valdinoci}, Adv. Math. 225, No. 5, 2808--2827 (2010; Zbl 1200.35131); \textit{A. Ratto} and \textit{M. Rigoli}, Tohoku Math. J. (2) 47, No. 4, 509--519 (1995; Zbl 0847.58069)] for a complete Riemannian manifold \((M, g)\) with nonnegative Ricci curvature and \(F(t) \ge 0\) for every \(t \in\mathbb{R}\). The authors prove that if \(u \in C^3(M)\) is a bounded solution of (1) with \(F \ge 0\) and there exists a point \(x_0\in M\) satisfying (2), then either \(u\) is constant or \(M\) splits as the Riemannian product \(\mathbb{R}\times N\), where \(N\) is a totally geodesic in \(M\) with nonnegative Ricci curvature. When the solution \(u\) is not constant, from the function \(u\), the authors obtain a harmonic function whose gradient is a parallel vector field and has unit length, and this shows a splitting of \(M\). Using the same argument, the authors also show a local version of a splitting result.