Curvature and Other Local Inequalities in Markov Semigroups

Abstract: Inspired by the approach of Ivanisvili and Volberg towards functional inequalities for probability measures with strictly convex potentials, we investigate the relationship between curvature bounds in the sense of Bakry-Emery and local functional inequalities. We will show that not only is the earlier approach for strictly convex potentials extendable to Markov semigroups and simplified through use of the $\Gamma$-calculus, providing a consolidating machinery for obtaining functional inequalities new and old in this general setting, but that a converse also holds. Local inequalities obtained are proven equivalent to Bakry-Emery curvature. Moreover we will develop this technique for metric measure spaces satisfying the RCD condition, providing a unified approach to functional and isoperimetric inequalities in non-smooth spaces with a synthetic Ricci curvature bound. Finally, we are interested in commutation properties for semi-group operators on $\mathbb{R}^n$ in the absence of positive curvature, based on a local eigenvalue criteria.