A characterization of non-collapsed \(\mathrm{RCD}(K,N)\) spaces via Einstein tensors (Q6970356)

The article gives a characterization of compact, non-collapsed, \(\mathrm{RCD}(K,N)\) spaces, namely metric measure spaces \((X,\mathsf{d}, \mathfrak{m})\) with synthetic Ricci curvature bounded below, dimension bounded above, and endowed with the \(N\)-dimensional Hausdorff measure, i.e., \(\mathfrak{m}=\mathcal{H}^N\).\N\NTo explain this characterization, we start by recalling that the Einstein tensor on a smooth Riemannian manifold \((M^n,g)\) is defined as\N\[\NG^g := \mathrm{Ric}^g - \tfrac{1}{2}\mathrm{Scal}^g\, g ,\N\]\Nand, thanks to the Bianchi identity, it is a divergence-free tensor. By a seminal paper of \textit{P. Bérard} et al. [Geom. Funct. Anal. 4, No. 4, 373--398 (1994; Zbl 0806.53044)], it is known that this tensor can be recovered in the limit\N\[\N\lim_{t\to 0^+}\frac{c(n)t^{(n+2)/2}g_t-g}{t}= -\frac{2}{3}G^g,\N\]\Nwhere \(c(n)\) is a suitable dimensional constant and \(g_t\) is the metric induced by the heat kernel embedding of the manifold into \(L^2(M^n,\mathrm{dvol}_g)\).\N\NHeat kernel embeddings in the context of \(\mathrm{RCD}(K,N)\) spaces have been investigated in [\textit{L. Ambrosio} et al., J. Funct. Anal. 280, No. 10, Article ID 108968, 72 p. (2021; Zbl 1478.53021)], where it is proved that, under the assumption\N\[\N\inf_{r\in (0,1),x\in X}\frac{\mathfrak{m}(B_r(x))}{r^n}>0,\tag{1}\N\]\Nthe following first order expansion holds\N\[\Nc(n)t^{(n+2)/2}g_t\to \frac{\mathrm{d}\mathcal{H}^n}{\mathrm{d}\mathfrak{m}}g \qquad \textrm{as } t\to 0^+.\N\]\NHere, \(g=g_{(X,\mathsf{d}, \mathfrak{m})}\) is the canonical Riemannian metric of the metric measure space \((X,\mathsf{d}, \mathfrak{m})\), and \(n\in [1,N]\cap \mathbb{N}\) is the essential dimension of the space.\N\NThe aforementioned characterization of the non-collapsed condition comes from the second order analysis, namely, the authors prove in their main theorem that a compact \(\mathrm{RCD}(K,N)\) metric measure space \((X,\mathsf{d}, \mathfrak{m})\) with essential dimension \(n\) has\N\[\N\mathfrak{m}=\frac{\mathfrak{m}(X)}{\mathcal{H}^n(X)}\mathcal{H}^n\tag{2}\N\]\Nif and only if (1) holds and the space satisfies the weakly divergence-free property, that is\N\[\N\lim_{t\to 0^+}\int_X\left\langle\frac{c(n)t^{(n+2)/2}g_t- \frac{\mathrm{d}\mathcal{H}^n}{\mathrm{d}\mathfrak{m}}g}{t},\nabla \omega\right\rangle \mathrm{d}\mathfrak{m}=0\N\]\Nfor all sufficiently regular \(1\)-forms \(\omega\). Notice that (2) implies that \((X,\mathsf{d}, \mathcal{H}^n)\) is a non-collapsed \(\mathrm{RCD}(K,n)\) space.\N\NIt is also shown that the result is sharp, in the sense that it cannot be extended to the non-compact case. As a final remark, we point out that in the smooth setting the main theorem gives a new, rather indirect proof of the divergence-free property of the Einstein tensor without making use of the Bianchi identity.