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We prove the Poincaré inequality for vector fields on the balls of the control distance by integrating along subunit paths. Our method requires that the balls are representable by means of suitable “controllable almost exponential maps”.

We propose an inverse iterative method for computing the Perron pair of an irreducible nonnegative third order tensor. The method involves the selection of a parameter $\theta_k$ in the $k$th iteration. For every positive starting vector, the method converges quadratically and is positivity preserving in the sense that the vectors approximating the Perron vector are strictly positive in each iteration. It is also shown that $\theta_k=1$ near convergence. The computational work for each iteration of the proposed method is less than four times (three times if the tensor is symmetric in modes two and three, and twice if we also take the parameter to be $1$ directly) that for each iteration of the Ng--Qi--Zhou algorithm, which is linearly convergent for essentially positive tensors.

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.

The present paper is devoted to the theory of discontinuous Markoff processes, that is processes where the transitions between states take place either by “jumps” of some specified kind, or by other means. States are taken as point$x$in an abstract space;$phases$are points ($x, t$) in the product state×time space; sets of states are denoted by$X$, sets of phases by$S$.