Hypoelliptic heat kernels on nilpotent Lie groups (Q309008)

The authors use generalized Fourier transform and an old idea of expressing a heat kernel as an eigenfunction expansion to study hypoelliptic heat kernels on a nilpotent Lie group \(G\). The formula the authors obtain using this approach is explicit as long as one can find all unitary irreducible representations of \(G\). The authors consider an \(n\)-step nilpotent Lie group \(G_n\) as an illustration of this technique. They first apply the Kirillov orbit method to describe this representation for \(G_n\) which enable one to express the corresponding hypoelliptic heat kernel using an integral formula over Euclidean space. As an application they obtain the short time behavior of the hypoelliptic heat kernel in this case.