An upper bound of the heat kernel along the harmonic-Ricci flow (Q304483)

The authors consider a family of metrics \(g(\cdot,t)\) on a manifold \(M\) and a family of smooth maps \(\phi(\cdot, t): (M,g(\cdot,t))\to (N,h)\) into another Riemannian manifold, and a positive non-increasing function \(\alpha(t)\) that defines a solution \((g(x,t),\phi(x,t))\) of the coupled system harmonic-Ricci flow in \(M^n\times [0, T)\) with initial value \((g_0, \phi_0)\): \[ \partial_tg=-2\mathrm{Ric} +2\alpha(t)\nabla\phi\otimes\nabla\phi, \quad \quad \partial_t\phi =\tau_g\phi. \] This flow may provide the existence of harmonic maps when the target space is not necessarily of non-positive curvature. Additionally, the function \(S=R -\alpha(t)|\nabla\phi|^2\) is considered, where \(R\) scalar curvature of \((M,g)\). In Theorem 1.1, a Sobolev inequality is proved. If for some positive constants \(A_0, B_0\) the following Sobolev inequality holds for the initial value \((g_0,\phi_0)\) for any \(v\in W^{1,2}(M,g_0)\), \[ \left(\int_M v^{\frac{2n}{n-2}}d\mu(g_0)\right)^{\frac{n-2}{n}}\leq A_0\int_M\left(|\nabla v|^2+ \frac{1}{4}Sv^2\right)d\mu(g_0) + B_0\int_Mv^2d\mu(g_0) \] the same inequality holds for \(g(t)\), for any \(t\in [0,T]\), with \(A(t)=Ce^{8tB_0/nA_0}\), and \(B(t)=Ce^{8tB_0/nA_0}\), where \(C\) is a positive constant depending only on \(A_0\), \(B_0\), \(g_0\), \(\phi_0\) and \(n\), and depends only on \(n\) if \(S\geq 0\) at \(t=0\). The proof consists in showing first a log-Sobolev inequality by using the monotonicity of the \(\mathcal{W}\)-entropy. As a corollary, a uniform Sobolev inequality follows if the first eigenvalue \(\lambda_0\) of \(\mathcal{F}\) entropy w.r.t. \(g_0\) is positive. Applying a Moser's iteration to the Sobolev inequality, under the assumption \(S\geq 0\) at \(t=0\), for a nonnegative Lipschitz continuous function \(f(x,t)\) satisfying \(\partial_tf \leq \Delta f + af\) on \(M\times [0,T]\), where \(a\geq 0\), a parabolic estimate is obtained in Theorem 1.2 for any \(p>0\) as follows \[ \sup_{x\in M} |f(x,t)| \leq \left(C_1a+ \frac{C_2}{t}\right)^{\frac{n+2}{2\rho}} \left(\int_0^T\int_M f^pd\mu dt\right)^{\frac{1}{p}} \] with \(C_i>0\) constants depending on \(n,p, g_0, \phi_0\) and the first eigenvalue \(\lambda_0\) of the \(\mathcal{F}\) entropy w.r.t. \(g_0\). In Theorem 1.3, assuming again \(S\geq 0\) at \(t=0\), by applying the proof of Theorem 1.2 to the heat equation \((\Delta-\partial_t)u(x,t)=0\), it is proved that the heat kernel can be estimated from above as \(G(x,t;y,s)\leq C/(t-s)^{n/2}\), for \(0\leq s<t\leq T\) and any \(x,y \in M\), where \(C\) is a positive constant that depends on \(n\), \(g_0\), \(\phi_0\) and the first eigenvalue \(\lambda_0\) of the \(\mathcal{F}\) entropy w.r.t. \(g_0\). The assumption \(S\geq 0\) can be dropped to obtain in Corollary 3.3 the same upper bound with the aditional fact that now \(C\) also depends on the upper bound for time \(T\).