For a sub-Riemannian manifold provided with a smooth volume, we relate the small-time asymptotics of the heat kernel at a point y of the cut locus from x with roughly “how much” y is conjugate to x. This is done under the hypothesis that all minimizers connecting x to y are strongly normal, i.e. all pieces of the trajectory are not abnormal. Our result is a refinement of the one of Leandre 4t log pt(x, y) ! −d2(x, y) for t ! 0, in which only the leading exponential term is detected. Our results are obtained by extending an idea of Molchanov from the Riemannian to the sub-Riemannian case, and some details we get appear to be new even in the Riemannian context. These results permit us to obtain properties of the sub-Riemannian distance starting from those of the heat kernel and vice versa. For the Grushin plane endowed with the Euclidean volume, we get the expansion pt(x, y)  t−5/4 exp(−d2(x, y)/4t) where y is reached from a - Riemannian point x by a minimizing geodesic which is conjugate at y.

In this paper we prove that any immersed stable capillary hypersurfaces in a ball in space forms are totally umbilical. %either a totally geodesic disk or a spherical cap. Our result also provides a proof of a conjecture proposed by Sternberg-Zumbrun in {\it J Reine Angew Math 503 (1998), 63--85}. We also prove a Heintze-Karcher-Ros type inequality for hypersurfaces with free boundary in a ball, which, together with the new Minkowski formula, yields a new proof of Alexandrov's Theorem for embedded CMC hypersurfaces in a ball with free boundary.

We provide a refinement of the Poincaré inequality on the torus $\mathbb{T}^{d}$ : there exists a set $\mathcal{B} \subset \mathbb{T} ^{d}$ of directions such that for every $\alpha \in \mathcal{B}$ there is a $c_{\alpha } > 0$ with $$\begin{aligned} \|\nabla f\|_{L^{2}(\mathbb{T}^{d})}^{d-1} \| \langle \nabla f, \alpha \rangle \|_{L^{2}(\mathbb{T}^{d})} \geq c_{\alpha }\|f\| _{L^{2}(\mathbb{T}^{d})}^{d} \quad \mbox{for all}~f\in H^{1}\bigl( \mathbb{T}^{d}\bigr)~ \mbox{with mean 0.} \end{aligned}$$ The derivative $\langle \nabla f, \alpha \rangle $ does not detect any oscillation in directions orthogonal to $\alpha $ , however, for certain $\alpha $ the geodesic flow in direction $\alpha $ is sufficiently mixing to compensate for that defect. On the two-dimensional torus $\mathbb{T}^{2}$ the inequality holds for $\alpha = (1, \sqrt{2})$ but is not true for $\alpha = (1,e)$ . Similar results should hold at a great level of generality on very general domains.

In this paper, we derive two subgradient estimates of the CR heat equation in a closed pseudohermitian 3-manifold which are served as the CR version of the Li-Yau gradient estimate. With its applications, we first get a subgradient estimate of the logarithm of the positive solution of the CR heat equation. Secondly, we have the Harnack inequality and upper bound estimate for the heat kernel. Finally, we obtain Perelman-type entropy formulae for the CR heat equation.

We define a hierarchy of Hamiltonian PDEs associated to an arbitrary tau-function in the semi-simple orbit of the Givental group action on genus expansions of Frobenius manifolds. We prove that the equations, the Hamiltonians, and the bracket are weightedhomogeneous polynomials in the derivatives of the dependent variables with respect to the space variable. In the particular case of a conformal (homogeneous) Frobenius structure, our hierarchy coincides with the Dubrovin–Zhang hierarchy that is canonically associated to the underlying Frobenius structure. Therefore, our approach allows to prove the polynomiality of the equations, Hamiltonians, and one of the Poisson brackets of these hierarchies, as conjectured by Dubrovin and Zhang.