Eigenvalues of the drifted Laplacian on complete metric measure spaces

Abstract

In this paper, first we study a complete smooth metric measure space [Formula: see text] with the ([Formula: see text])-Bakry–Émery Ricci curvature [Formula: see text] for some positive constant [Formula: see text]. It is known that the spectrum of the drifted Laplacian [Formula: see text] for [Formula: see text] is discrete and the first nonzero eigenvalue of [Formula: see text] has lower bound [Formula: see text]. We prove that if the lower bound [Formula: see text] is achieved with multiplicity [Formula: see text], then [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] is isometric to [Formula: see text] for some complete [Formula: see text]-dimensional manifold [Formula: see text] and by passing an isometry, [Formula: see text] must split off a gradient shrinking Ricci soliton [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text]. This result can be applied to gradient shrinking Ricci solitons. Secondly, we study the drifted Laplacian [Formula: see text] for properly immersed self-shrinkers in the Euclidean space [Formula: see text], [Formula: see text] and show the discreteness of the spectrum of [Formula: see text] and a logarithmic Sobolev inequality.