Explicit recurrence criteria for symmetric gradient type Dirichlet forms satisfying a Hamza type condition

Abstract

In this note, we present explicit conditions for symmetric gradient type Dirichlet forms to be recurrent. This type of Dirichlet form is typically strongly local and hence associated to a diffusion. We consider the one dimensional case and the multidimensional case, as well as the case with reflecting boundary conditions. Our main achievement is that the explicit results are obtained under quite weak assumptions on the closability, hence regularity of the underlying coefficients. Especially in dimension one, where a Hamza type condition is assumed, the construction of the sequence of functions $(u_n)_{n\in \N}$ in the Dirichlet space that determine recurrence works for quite general Dirichlet forms but is still explicit.