Hypoellipticity and Higher Order Gaussian Bounds

Abstract: Let $(\mathfrak{M},\rho,\mu)$ be a metric space of homogeneous type, $p_0\in (1,\infty)$, and $T(t):L^{p_0}(\mathfrak{M},\mu)\rightarrow L^{p_0}(\mathfrak{M},\mu)$, $t\geq 0$, a strongly continuous semi-group. We provide sufficient conditions under which $T(t)$ is given by integration against an integral kernel satisfying higher-order Gaussian bounds of the form [ \left| K_t(x,y) \right| \leq C \exp\left( -c \left( \frac{\rho(x,y)^{2\kappa}}{t} \right)^{\frac{1}{2\kappa-1}} \right) \mu\left( B(x,\rho(x,y)+t^{1/2\kappa}) \right)^{-1}. ] We also provide conditions for similar bounds on ``derivatives'' of $K_t(x,y)$ and our results are localizable. If $A$ is the generator of $T(t)$ the main hypothesis is that $\partial_t -A$ and $\partial_t-A^{*}$ satisfy a hypoelliptic estimate at every scale, uniformly in the scale. We present applications to subelliptic PDEs.