Intrinsic metric and one-dimensional diffusions (Q2322615)

This paper studies the intrinsic metric of one-dimensional diffusions. Let \((\mathcal{E},\mathcal{F})\) be a strongly local symmetric Dirichlet form on \(L^2(E;m)\), where \(E\) is a locally compact separable Hausdorff space and \(m\) is a fully supported Radon measure on \(E\). The energy measure \(\mu_{\langle u\rangle}\) is defined by \[ \int_E fd\mu_{\langle u\rangle}=2\mathcal{E}(uf,u)-\mathcal{E}(u^2,f),\quad f\in \mathcal{F}\cap C_c(E), \] for firstly \(u\in \mathcal{F}\cap L^{\infty}(E;m)\) and then extended to \(u\in \mathcal{F}_{\mathrm{loc}}\). The energy measure \(\mu_{\langle u\rangle}\) induces an intrinsic (pseudo) metric defined by \[ \rho(x,y)=\sup\big\{u(x)-u(y): u\in \mathcal{F}_{\mathrm{loc}}\cap C(E), \mu_{\langle u\rangle}\leq m\ \text{on}\ E\big\}. \] The intrinsic metric plays an important role in estimating heat kernels, Green functions, capacities, etc. As to one-dimensional strongly local, regular, irreducible and symmetric Dirichlet forms, this paper derives the intrinsic metric in terms of the scale function \(s\) and speed measure \(m\). As an application, the authors give a new beautiful characterization of regular Dirichlet subspaces and extensions of Brownian motion. Two examples on the volume doubling property of regular Dirichlet subspaces of Brownian motion are presented.