Parabolicidade, espaços de funções harmônicas e topologia no infinito de uma variedade completa

Abstract

The aim of this work is to investigate the intrinsic relationship between certain spaces of harmonic functions on a complete manifold and their topology in the infinite. Assuming appropriate bounds on the Ricci curvature, we obtain estimates for the solutions of the Laplace and heat equations. This theory has important applications to geometry and topology of manifolds, some of which are presented here. In a manifold with more than one end, we have built a space of harmonic functions with remarkable properties. In turn, estimating the dimension of this space through geometric considerations will help us to understand the topology in the infinite of the manifold. More specifically, we will show a generalization of the celebrated Cheeger-Gromoll Splitting theorem.