Volume Growth and Recurrence of Fractional Powers of the Laplace--Beltrami Operator

Source abstract

Let $M$ be a connected geodesically complete Riemannian manifold without boundary, write $μ$ for Riemannian volume, and set $V(o,r)=μ(B(o,r))$ for geodesic balls centered at $o$. For $0<α<2$, let $X^{(α)}$ be the process obtained by subordinating Brownian motion with an independent $α/2$-stable subordinator; its $L^2$-generator is $-(-Δ)^{α/2}$. We prove that $$\int^\infty\frac{dt}{V(o,t^{1/α})}=\infty$$ implies that $X^{(α)}$ is recurrent. The proof uses a spectral trace estimate and radial cutoffs on $M\times(0,\infty)$, where the auxiliary measure is $y^{1-α}\,dμ\,dy$. It proves the sufficient implication in Grigor'yan's Problem~26.