Small time heat kernel behavior on Riemannian complexes (Q958351)

The present paper essentially contributes to the analysis on Riemannian polyhedral complexes \(X\) which are formed by a certain collection of \(n\)-dimensional convex polyhedra glued together along \((n-1)\)-dimensional faces. Each polyhedron carries the metric structure of a Riemannian manifold and on common faces these metrics coincide. Such complexes can be infinite but some local geometric assumptions have to be posed such as an upper bound on the number of \(n\)-dimensional polyhedra sharing one face and lower bounds on the interior angles and distances between non-intersecting faces. Moreover, a uniform ellipticity condition of the Riemannian metric has to be assumed. Using two equivalent methods the authors define a Dirichlet form on \(L^2(X)\) which uniquely determines a self-adjoint Laplace operator \((\Delta, \text{Dom}(\Delta))\) on \(L^2(X)\). Then uniform local Poincaré inequalities are established by making use of the geometric assumptions on the complex. Various applications to the analysis of the heat equation on \(X\) arise. As a crucial ingredient the authors use a theorem of K.-T. Sturm which states that ``local volume doubling'' and ``Poincaré estimates'' on a subset of a complete metric space imply local parabolic Harnack inequalities on that subset. Small time estimates for the heat kernel on the diagonal and off-diagonal bounds are given and a uniqueness result for the positive Cauchy problem is proven. Finally, the existence of uniformly global Poincaré inequalities on a complex \(X\) is discussed under the additional assumption that there is a finitely generated group \(G\) of isometries of \(X\) such that \(X\backslash G\) is a complex consisting of a finite number of polytopes. Global heat kernel estimates follow under the assumption that \(G\) has polynomial volume growth.