On ancient solutions of the heat equation

Abstract

An explicit representation formula for all positive ancient solutions of the heat equation in the Euclidean case is found. In the Riemannian case with nonnegative Ricci curvature, a similar but less explicit formula is also found. Here it is proven that any positive ancient solution is the standard Laplace transform of positive solutions of the family of elliptic operator $Δ- s$ with $s>0$. Further relaxation of the curvature assumption is also possible. It is also shown that the linear space of ancient solutions of polynomial growth has finite dimension and these solutions are polynomials in time.

19 page. An addendum by T. Swayze is added, providing more detail for the proof of Theorem 1.1