Elliptic gradient estimates for a weighted heat equation and applications

Abstract

We obtain two elliptic gradient estimates for positive solutions to the $$f$$ -heat equation on a complete smooth metric measure space with only Bakry–Emery Ricci tensor bounded below. One is a local sharp Souplet–Zhang’s type and the other is a global Hamilton’s type. As applications, we prove parabolic Liouville theorems for ancient solutions satisfying some growth restriction near infinity. In particular the Liouville results are suitable for the gradient shrinking or steady Ricci solitons. The estimates of derivation of the $$f$$ -heat kernel are also obtained.