Martin boundary for homogeneous Riemannian manifolds of neagtive curvature at the bottom of the spectrum (Q5960828)

The authors determine the Martin boundary for elliptic operators given as the sum of squares of vector fields on a simply connected homogeneous Riemannian manifold \(M\) with negative curvature. Since such a manifold \(M\) is isometric to a solvable Lie group \(S\) which is a semi-direct product \(N\rtimes A\) of a nilpotent Lie group \(N\) and \(A=\mathbb R^+\), the analysis can be simplified to \(S\), resp. \(N\) and \(A\). Consider on \(S\) the sum of squares of left-invariant vector fields \[ \mathcal L = \mathcal L_\gamma = \sum_{j=0}^m Y_j + Y \] where \(\{Y_0,Y_1,\ldots Y_m\}\) generate the Lie algebra \(\mathfrak s\). The \(\gamma\in\mathbb R \) signals the \(\mathfrak a\)-component of the vector field \(Y\). The main aim of the paper is to determine the Martin boundary for \(\mathcal L\) both in the coercive and the non-coercive case. The first case was already solved by \textit{E. Damek} [Ann. Fac. Sci. Toulouse (6) 5, 421--441 (1996; Zbl 0876.22008)] employing \textit{A. Ancona}'s method [Ann. Math. (2) 125, 495--535 (1987; Zbl 0652.31008)]. The non-coercive case and \(\gamma=0\) require a different technique and the present paper uses the probabilistic methods developed by two of the authors in [Studia Math. 103, 239--264 (1992; Zbl 0824.43002)] and extended in [Studia Math. 126, 114--148 (1997; Zbl 0888.22007)]. Roughly speaking, the idea is to split the \(\mathcal L_\gamma\)-diffusion process into a horizontal ``Bessel'' process and a vertical component (which is determined by an explicit evolution equation). This allows to obtain two-sided estimates for the Poisson kernel \(m_\gamma\) of \(\mathcal L_\gamma\) (even in the case where \(\gamma = 0\)) of the form \(m_\gamma(x)\sim (|x|+1)^{-Q-\gamma}\). From this it is then possible to determine the Martin boundary of \(\mathcal L_\gamma\) and, in particular, of \(\mathcal L_0\).