1
$\begingroup$

Sry this the second question from the following article, I am asking in this week.

At page 6 (126), 3th line, of the following article.

THE HEAT EQUATION WITH A SINGULAR POTENTIAL

the authors say by positivity preserving property of the semigroup $\{e^{t \Delta}\}$, we have:

$$ e^{\delta (\Delta+ V_n)}v_0 = \lim_{m \to \infty} (e^{\delta \Delta/m } e^{(\delta/m) V_n})^m v_0 \leq e^{\delta \lambda} e^{\delta \Delta} v_0$$

Here $\delta >0$, $V_n$ is a non-negative bounded function, $\| V_n\|_{\infty}\leq \lambda$ and $v_0$ is an initial value.

I can't understand this inequality. Why this limiting procedure is necessary and where the positivity preserving property is used?

$\endgroup$

1 Answer 1

4
$\begingroup$

The first equality is known as the Trotter product formula. There are some hypotheses to check, and one should pay attention to the mode of convergence, but at a formal level, it's what you'd expect. I believe you can find details in Reed and Simon.

For the second, you may show that for any $t \ge 0$ and any integer $k \ge 0$, we have $$(e^{t\Delta} e^{tV_n})^k v_0 \le e^{k t \lambda} e^{k t \Delta} v_0 \tag{*}.$$ Let $v_k$ denote the function on the left side.

First, note that $v_0$ is assumed to be nonnegative, and you can then check (using the positivity preserving of $e^{t\Delta}$) that each $v_k$ is also nonnegative.

Now you can prove (*) by induction. The base case $k=0$ is trivial. Suppose that (*) holds for $k$. Since $v_k \ge 0$, we have $$e^{t V_n} v_k \le e^{t \lambda} v_k \le e^{(k+1)t \lambda} e^{kt\Delta} v_0$$ by the induction hypothesis. So, by the positivity preserving of $e^{t \Delta}$, we have $$\begin{align*}v_{k+1} &= e^{t \Delta} (e^{t V_n} v_k)\\ &\le e^{t\Delta} (e^{(k+1)t \lambda} e^{kt\Delta} v_0) \\ &= e^{(k+1)t \lambda} e^{t \Delta} e^{k t \Delta} v_0 \\ &= e^{(k+1)t \lambda} e^{(k+1)t \Delta} v_0 \end{align*}$$ as desired.

Now applying (*) with $k=m$ and $t = \delta/m$, we have $$ (e^{\delta \Delta/m } e^{(\delta/m) V_n})^m v_0 \leq e^{\delta \lambda} e^{\delta \Delta} v_0$$ and now pass to the limit as $m \to \infty$.

$\endgroup$

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .