New formulas for the Laplacian of distance functions and applications

The goal of the paper is to prove an exact representation formula for the Laplacian of the distance (and more generally for an arbitrary 1-Lipschitz function) in the framework of metric measure spaces satisfying Ricci curvature lower bounds in a synthetic sense (more precisely in essentially non-branching MCP(K,N)-spaces). Such a representation formula makes apparent the classical upper bounds and also some new lower bounds, together with a precise description of the singular part. The exact representation formula for the Laplacian of 1-Lipschitz functions (in particular for distance functions) holds also (and seems new) in a general complete Riemannian manifold. We apply these results to prove the equivalence of CD(K,N) and a dimensional Bochner inequality on signed distance functions. Moreover we obtain a measure-theoretic Splitting Theorem for infinitesimally Hilbertian essentially non-branching spaces verifying MCP(0,N).Comment: Final version to appear in Analysis and PD

Steady nearly incompressible vector fields in 2D: chain rule and renormalization

Given bounded vector field $b : \mathbb R^d \to \mathbb R^d$, scalar field $u : \mathbb R^d \to \mathbb R$ and a smooth function $\beta : \mathbb R \to \mathbb R$ we study the characterization of the distribution $\mathrm{div}(\beta(u)b)$ in terms of $\mathrm{div}\, b$ and $\mathrm{div}(u b)$. In the case of $BV$ vector fields $b$ (and under some further assumptions) such characterization was obtained by L. Ambrosio, C. De Lellis and J. Mal\'y, up to an error term which is a measure concentrated on so-called \emph{tangential set} of $b$. We answer some questions posed in their paper concerning the properties of this term. In particular we construct a nearly incompressible $BV$ vector field $b$ and a bounded function $u$ for which this term is nonzero. For steady nearly incompressible vector fields $b$ (and under some further assumptions) in case when $d=2$ we provide complete characterization of $\mathrm{div}(\beta(u) b)$ in terms of $\mathrm{div}\, b$ and $\mathrm{div}(u b)$. Our approach relies on the structure of level sets of Lipschitz functions on $\mathrm R^2$ obtained by G. Alberti, S. Bianchini and G. Crippa. Extending our technique we obtain new sufficient conditions when any bounded weak solution $u$ of $\partial_t u + b \cdot \nabla u=0$ is \emph{renormalized}, i.e. also solves $\partial_t \beta(u) + b \cdot \nabla \beta(u)=0$ for any smooth function $\beta : \mathbb R \to \mathbb R$. As a consequence we obtain new uniqueness result for this equation.Comment: 50 pages, 8 figure

On the differential structure of metric measure spaces and applications

The main goals of this paper are: i) To develop an abstract differential calculus on metric measure spaces by investigating the duality relations between differentials and gradients of Sobolev functions. This will be achieved without calling into play any sort of analysis in charts, our assumptions being: the metric space is complete and separable and the measure is Borel, non negative and locally finite. ii) To employ these notions of calculus to provide, via integration by parts, a general definition of distributional Laplacian, thus giving a meaning to an expression like $\Delta g=\mu$, where $g$ is a function and $\mu$ is a measure. iii) To show that on spaces with Ricci curvature bounded from below and dimension bounded from above, the Laplacian of the distance function is always a measure and that this measure has the standard sharp comparison properties. This result requires an additional assumption on the space, which reduces to strict convexity of the norm in the case of smooth Finsler structures and is always satisfied on spaces with linear Laplacian, a situation which is analyzed in detail.Comment: Clarified the dependence on the Sobolev exponent $p$ of various objects built in the paper. Updated bibliography. Corrected typo