The rigidity of sharp spectral gap in non-negatively curved spaces

Abstract

We extend the celebrated rigidity of the sharp first spectral gap underRic≥0 to compact infinitesimally Hilbertian spaces with non-negative (weak, also called synthetic) Ricci curvature and bounded (synthetic) dimension i.e. to so-called compact RCD0,N spaces; this is a category of metric measure spaces which in particular includes (Ricci) non-negatively curved Riemannian manifolds, Alexandrov spaces, Ricci limit spaces, Bakry–Émery manifolds along with products, certain quotients and measured Gromov–Hausdorff limits of such spaces. In precise terms, we show in such spaces,λ1=π2diam2if and only if the space is one dimensional with a constant density function. We use new techniques mixing Sobolev theory and singular 1D-localization which might also be of independent interest. As a consequence of the rigidity in the singular setting, we also derive almost rigidity results.