There are several generalizations of the classical theory of Sobolev spaces as they are necessary for the applications to Carnot-Carathéodory spaces, subelliptic equations, quasiconformal mappings on Carnot groups and more general Loewner spaces, analysis on topological manifolds, potential theory on infinite graphs, analysis on fractals and the theory of Dirichlet forms. The aim of this paper is to present a unified approach to the theory of Sobolev spaces that covers applications to many of those areas. The variety of different areas of applications forces a very general setting. We are given a metric space X equipped with a doubling measure ¯. A generalization of a Sobolev function and its gradient is a pair u 2 L 1 loc (X), 0 g 2 L p (X) such that for every ball B ae X the Poincar'e-type inequality Z B ju \Gamma uB j d¯ Cr `Z oeB g p d¯ ' 1=p holds, where r is the radius of B and oe 1, C ? 0 are fixed constants. Working in the above setting we show that basically...

We show that, if a certain Sobolev inequality holds, then a scale-invariant elliptic Harnack inequality suces to imply its a priori stronger parabolic counterpart. Neither the relative Sobolev inequality nor the elliptic Harnack inequality alone suces to imply the parabolic Harnack inequality in question; both are necessary conditions. As an application, we show the equivalence between parabolic Harnack inequality for on M , (i.e., for @ t + ) and elliptic Harnack inequality for @ 2 t + on R M . 1

. We prove the compactness of the imbedding of the Sobolev space W 1;2 0 (\Omega\Gamma into L 2(\Omega\Gamma for any relatively compact open subset\Omega of an Alexandrov space. As a corollary, the generator induced from the Dirichlet (energy) form has discrete spectrum. The generator can be approximated by the Laplacian induced from the DC-structure on the Alexandrov space. We also prove the existence of the locally Holder continuous Dirichlet heat kernel. 1. Introduction Consider a family M of n-dimensional closed Riemannian manifolds with a uniform lower bound of sectional curvature and a uniform upper bound of diameter for a fixed n 2 N . In order to investigate various properties of manifolds in M, it is very useful to study its closure M with respect to the Gromov-Hausdorff distance dGH , which is compact by the Gromov compactness theorem [15]. Since the closure M consists of Alexandrov spaces introduced in [2], the study of Alexandrov spaces is nowadays an important topic i...

Let L be a nonsymmetric operator of type Lu = P a ij @ i @ j u + P b i @ i u on an arbitrary subset U ae R d . We analyse L as an operator on L 1 (U; ¯) where ¯ is an invariant measure, i.e., a possibly infinite measure ¯ satisfying the equation L ¯ = 0 (in the weak sense). We explicitely construct, under mild regularity assumptions, extensions of L generating sub--Markovian C0 --semigroups on L 1 (U; ¯) as well as associated diffusion processes. We give sufficient conditions on the coefficients so that there exists only one extension of L generating a C0 --semigroup and apply the results to prove uniqueness of the invariant measure ¯. Our results imply in particular that if ' 2 H 1;2 loc (R d ; dx), ' 6= 0 dx--a.e., the generalized Schrödinger operator (\Delta + 2' \Gamma1 r' \Delta r;C 1 0 (R d )) has exactly one extension generating a C0 --semigroup if and only if the Friedrich's extension is conservative. We also give existence and uniqueness results for ...

The existence of positive weak solutions is related to spectral information on the corresponding partial differential operator.

A Hermitian form q on the dual space, g ∗ , of the Lie algebra, g, of a Lie group, G, determines a sub-Laplacian, ∆, on G. It will be shown that Hörmander’s condition for hypoellipticity of the sub-Laplacian holds if and only if the associated Hermitian form, induced by q on the dual of the universal enveloping algebra, U ′ , is nondegenerate. The subelliptic heat semigroup, e t∆/4, is given by convolution by a C ∞ probability density ρt. When G is complex and u: G → C is a holomorphic function, the collection of derivatives of u at the identity in G gives rise to an element, û(e) ∈ ∗Key words and phrases. Subelliptic, heat kernel, complex groups, universal enveloping algebra, Taylor map.

Saloff-Coste Abstract. We study how bounds on the local geometry of a Riemannian polyhedral complex yield uniform local Poincaré inequalities. These inequalities have a variety of applications, including bounds on the heat kernel and a uniform local Harnack inequality. We additionally consider the example of a complex, X, which has a finitely generated group of isomorphisms, G, such that X/G = Y is a complex consisting of a finite number of polytopes. We show that when this group, G, haspolynomial volume growth, there is a uniform global Poincaré inequality on

Abstract. We present an introduction to the framework of strongly local Dirichlet forms and discuss connections between the existence of certain generalized eigenfunctions and spectral properties within this framework. The range of applications is illustrated by a list of examples.

Abstract. We survey geometric properties which imply the stochastic incompleteness of the minimal diffusion process associated to the Laplacian on manifolds and graphs. In particular, we completely characterize stochastic incompleteness for spherically symmetric graphs and show that, in contrast to the case of Riemannian manifolds, there exist examples of stochastically incomplete graphs of polynomial volume growth.

Abstract The classical Sobolev inequalities play a key role in analysis in Euclidean spaces and in the study of solutions of partial differential equations. In fact, they are extremely flexible tools and are useful in many different settings. This paper gives a glimpse of assortments of such applications in a variety of contexts. 1