Functional inequalities on arbitrary Riemannian manifolds (Q703668)

Given a not necessarily complete Riemannian manifold \((M,g)\), the author studies the existence of probability measures \(\mu=e^V\,dx\) with \(V\in C^\infty(M)\), for which functional equalities like the logarithmic Sobolev inequality \[ \mu(f^2\log f^2)\leq C\,\mu(\left| \nabla f\right| ^2) +\mu(f^2)\,\log\mu(f^2)\tag{*} \] hold for all \(f\in W^{2,1}(\mu)\) with a fixed constant \(C\) that depends only on \(M\), \(g\) and \(\mu\). For complete \(M\) with \(\text{Ric}-\text{Hess}_V\geq K>0\), such an inequality was established by \textit{D. Bakry} and \textit{M. Emery} in [C. R. Acad. Sci., Paris, Sér. I 299, 775--778 (1984; Zbl 0563.60068)]. The author proves that on each Riemannian manifold there exists \(V\in C^\infty(M\setminus D)\) satisfying (*), where \(D\) is a set of Riemannian measure zero. If \(M\) is diffeomorphic to \(N\times\mathbb R^n\) for some compact manifold \(N\), then one even gets \(V\in C^\infty(M)\). There is a similar theorem where (*) is replaced by an inequality of Poincaré type.