Heat content asymptotics for sub-Riemannian manifolds

Abstract: We study the small-time asymptotics of the heat content of smooth non-characteristic domains of a general rank-varying sub-Riemannian structure, equipped with an arbitrary smooth measure. By adapting to the sub-Riemannian case a technique due to Savo, we establish the existence of the full asymptotic series: \begin{equation} Q_\Omega(t) = \sum_{k=0}^{\infty} a_k t^{k/2}, \qquad \text{as } t\to 0. \end{equation} We compute explicitly the coefficients up to order $k=5$, in terms of sub-Riemannian invariants of the domain and its boundary. Furthermore, we prove that every coefficient can be obtained as the limit of the corresponding one for a suitable Riemannian extension. As a particular case we recover, using non-probabilistic techniques, the order $2$ formula due to Tyson and Wang in the first Heisenberg group [J. Tyson, J. Wang, Comm. PDE, 2018]. An intriguing byproduct of our fifth-order analysis is the evidence for new phenomena in presence of characteristic points. In particular, we prove that the higher order coefficients in the expansion can blow-up in their presence. A key tool for this last result is an exact formula for the sub-Riemannian distance from a specific surface with an isolated characteristic point in the first Heisenberg group, which is of independent interest.