Heat trace asymptotics on equiregular sub-Riemannian manifolds (Q826462)

Let \(M\) be a compact equiregular sub-Riemannian manifold, with horizontal gradient \(\nabla\). Given a smooth measure \(\mu\) on \(M\), consider the sub-Laplacian \(\Delta = \operatorname{div}_{\mu} \nabla\), which is essentially self-adjoint on \(L^2(M, \mu)\), and let \(e^{t \Delta/2}\) be its heat semigroup. The main result of the paper (Theorem 1.1) is that the heat trace \(\operatorname{Trace}(e^{t \Delta/2})\) admits an asymptotic expansion of the form \[ \operatorname{Trace}(e^{t \Delta/2}) \sim \frac{1}{t^{\nu/2}}(c_0 + c_1 t + c_2 t^2 + \cdots) \tag{1} \] as \(t \to 0\), where \(\nu\) is the Hausdorff dimension of \(M\) and \(c_0 > 0\). As a corollary (Corollary 1.2), the spectral zeta function \(\zeta_\Delta(s)\) admits a meromorphic prolongation to the entire complex plane \(\mathbb{C}\); see for instance Section 9.6 of [\textit{N. Berline} et al., Heat kernels and Dirac operators. Paperback ed. Berlin: Springer (2004; Zbl 1037.58015)]. The proof is by probabilistic methods. Following some preliminaries, Section 5 of the paper considers what is in effect the case \(M = \mathbb{R}^d\), where one has \(\Delta = \frac{1}{2} \sum_{i=1}^n V_i^2\) where \(V_1, \dots, V_n\) is a system of sufficiently nice vector fields satisfying Hörmander's bracket-generating condition. The idea is to study the process \(X^\varepsilon(t,x)\) satisfying the Stratonovich stochastic differential equation \[ dX^\varepsilon(t,x) = \varepsilon \sum_{i=1}^n V_i(X^\varepsilon(t,x)) \circ dw_t^i, \qquad X^\varepsilon(0,x) = x \tag{2} \] so that the on-diagonal heat kernel may be written as \(p_t(x,x) = \mathbb{E}[\delta_x(X^1(t,x))]\) where \(\delta_x\) is the Dirac delta in the sense of Watanabe distributions [\textit{N. Ikeda} and \textit{S. Watanabe}, Stochastic differential equations and diffusion processes. 2nd ed. Amsterdam etc.: North-Holland; Tokyo: Kodansha Ltd. (1989; Zbl 0684.60040)]. Theorem 5.4 gives an asymptotic expansion in \(\varepsilon\), uniform in \(x\), for the generalized Wiener functional \(\delta_x(X^\varepsilon(1,x))\), in the space \(\tilde{\mathbb{D}}_{-\infty}\) of Watanabe distributions: \[ \delta_x X^\varepsilon(1,x) \sim \varepsilon^{-\nu} (\Theta_0(x) + \varepsilon \Theta_1(x) + \varepsilon^2 \Theta_2(x) + \cdots). \tag{3} \] By taking expectations and rescaling space and time, one recovers an asymptotic expansion as \(t \to 0\), uniformly in \(x\), for the on-diagonal heat kernel: \[ p_t(x,x) \sim \frac{1}{t^{\nu/2}}(c_0(x) + c_1(x) t + c_2(x) t^2 + \cdots )\tag{4} \] Moreover, by a Girsanov argument, it is shown in Corollary 5.12 that the same result holds if a drift term is added to (2). The authors mention related work: [\textit{S. Takanobu}, Publ. Res. Inst. Math. Sci. 24, No. 2, 169--203 (1988; Zbl 0677.35019)], which their proof generally follows, produces the stochastic expansion (3) for each \(x\), but does not give uniformity in \(x\). On the other hand [\textit{G. Ben Arous}, Ann. Inst. Fourier 39, No. 1, 73--99 (1989; Zbl 0659.35024)] obtains the uniform asymptotic expansion (4) for \(p_t(x,x)\), but not the stochastic expansion (3) in the space \(\tilde{\mathbb{D}}_{-\infty}\), and does not allow for a drift term, which is essential in order to get the desired result for manifolds. Section 6 turns to the case of a compact equiregular sub-Riemannian manifold. One constructs on \(M\), via stochastic parallel transport, a diffusion process \(X(x,t)\) whose generator is the sub-Laplacian \(\Delta = \operatorname{div}_\mu \nabla\). (The connection is taken to be the Levi-Civita connection of a Riemannian extension of the sub-Riemannian metric of \(M\).) In local coordinates, the process \(X(x,t)\) satisfies a drift-diffusion SDE of the type considered in Corollary 5.12, and one thus obtains (Theorem 6.1) an on-diagonal uniform asymptotic expansion for the heat kernel \(p_t(x,x)\) of the form (4), which when integrated in \(x\) yields the expansion (1) for the heat trace. In Section 7 the authors produce exact formulas for the leading term \(c_0\) of the expansion (1) in several special cases: Riemannian manifolds, 3-dimensional contact sub-Riemannian manifolds, strictly pseudoconvex CR-manifolds, and step-two equiregular compact sub-Riemannian manifolds. In each case the measure \(\mu\) is taken to be the Popp measure. Appendix A, which is not directly related to the main results of the paper, shows how to use similar probabilistic methods to recover the formula of \textit{J. Cygan} [Stud. Math. 64, 227--238 (1979; Zbl 0336.35029)] for the heat kernel on a nilpotent Lie group of step two.