Bakry-Émery curvature-dimension condition and Riemannian Ricci curvature bounds (Q482841)

The authors study the relationship between the Bakry-Émery and the Lott-Sturm-Villani approaches to ``provide synthetic and abstract notions of lower Ricci curvature bounds.'' Consider a smooth Riemannian manifold \((M^d, g)\) endowed with the measure \(\mathfrak{m} =e^{-V}Vol_g\), where \(V:M^d\to \mathbb{R}\) is a given potential. The operator \(\Gamma\), acting on smooth functions on \(M^d\), is defined by \(\Gamma(f)=|\nabla f|^2_g\). Then \(\Delta_\mathcal{E} =\Delta _g - <\nabla V,\nabla .>_g\), where \(\Delta_g\) is the usual Laplace-Beltrami operator. One defines the iteration operator \(\Gamma_2\) by 2\(\Gamma_2(f) =\Delta_\mathcal{E}\Gamma(f)-2\Gamma(f,\Delta_{\mathcal{E}}f)\). The fundamental inequality \(\Gamma_2(f)\geq K\Gamma(f)+1/N(\Delta_{\mathcal{E}}f)^2\), obtained when \(Ric_g+ Hess_gV\) is bounded from below by \(K g+ 1/(N-d) \nabla V \otimes \nabla V\) for some \(K\in \mathbb{R}\) and \(N>d\), can be considered as a definition of curvature-dimension bounds. It is called the Bakry-Émery curvature-dimension condition and is denoted by \(BE(K,N)\). The \(RCD(K,\infty )\) condition is an inequality involving the spaces with Riemannian Ricci curvature bounded from below. In the present paper the authors provide necessary and sufficient conditions for the validity of the implication \(BE(K,\infty)\Rightarrow RCD(K,\infty)\). The main result is Theorem 1.1. Let \((X,\tau)\) be a Polish space and let \(\mathfrak{m}\) be a finite Borel measure in \(X\). Let \(\mathcal{E}: L^2(X,\mathfrak{m})\to [0,\infty)\) be a strongly local symmetric Dirichlet form generating a mass preserving Markov semigroup \((P_t)_{t\geq 0}\) in \(L^2(X,\mathfrak{m})\). Denote by \(d_\mathcal{E}\) the intrinsic distance for points in \(X\) and assume that: (i) \(d_\mathcal{E}\) is a complete distance on \(X\) inducing the topology \(\tau\) and any function \(f\in \mathbf{G}_\infty\) with \(\Gamma(f)\leq 1\) admits a continuous representative; (ii) the Bakry-Émery \(BE(K,\infty)\) condition is fulfilled by \((P_t)_{t\geq 0}\). Then \((X, d_\mathcal{E}, \mathfrak{m})\) is a \(RCD(K,\infty)\) space.