Obata's rigidity theorem for metric measure spaces

Abstract

We prove Obata's rigidity theorem for metric measure spaces that satisfy a Riemannian curvature-dimension condition. Additionally, we show that a lower bound $K$ for the generalized Hessian of a sufficiently regular function $u$ holds if and only if $u$ is $K$-convex. A corollary is also a rigidity result for higher order eigenvalues.