Strong Feller processes with measure-valued drifts

Abstract

We construct a strong Feller process associated with $-\Delta + \sigma \cdot \nabla$, with drift $\sigma$ in a wide class of measures (weakly form-bounded measures, e.g. combining weak $L^d$ and Kato class measure singularities), by exploiting a quantitative dependence of the smoothness of the domain of an operator realization of $-\Delta + \sigma \cdot \nabla$ generating a holomorphic $C_0$-semigroup on $L^p(\mathbb R^d)$, $p>d-1$, on the value of the form-bound of $\sigma$. Our method admits extension to other types of perturbations of $-\Delta$ or $(-\Delta)^{\frac{\alpha}{2}}$, e.g. to yield new $L^p$-regularity results for Schr\"odinger operators with form-bounded measure potentials.