Differential Harnack inequalities on Riemannian manifolds. I: Linear heat equation (Q631820)

Let \((M,g)\) be a complete Riemannian manifold and assume that \(\text{Ricc}(B_{2R})\geq -k\) where \(k\geq 0\) and \(B_{2R}\) denotes a geodesic ball. In Theorems 1.1 and 1.2 of this paper, two Li-Yau type gradient estimates for positive solutions of the heat equation on \(M\) are proved. The second one can be interpreted as the linearized version of the first one. Moreover, these estimates are of local type on \(B_R\) and lead to previously known global inequalities as \(R\rightarrow \infty\). The sharpness of the inequalities is discussed, and, in the cases of small and large time parameter \(t>0\), the results are compared with different gradient estimates by Yau, its improved version by Bakry and Qian, and with an estimate by Hamilton. As an application of both gradient estimates, the authors derive corresponding new Harnack inequalities for positive solutions of the heat kernel which in turn lead to lower bounds of the heat kernel. The second part of the paper establishes a differential Harnack inequality for heat kernels on \(M\) with {Ricc}\((M)>-k\). In the case of \(k=0\) this inequality reduces to a previous result by Ni. In Theorem 5.1., the differential Harnack inequality is then used to derive certain Harnack type estimates. In the final section, various entropy functionals are defined such as Li-Yau type entropy, Perelman type entropy and Nash entropy. Based on the previous estimates various monotonicity formulas are given and then specalized to the case of arbitrary compact Riemannian and Einstein manifolds. An appendix at the end of the paper collects some standard material in the field of the heat equation on Riemannian manifolds.