A rigidity result for metric measure spaces with Euclidean heat kernel

Abstract

We prove that a metric measure space equipped with a Dirichlet form admitting an Euclidean heat kernel is necessarily isometric to the Euclidean space. This helps us providing an alternative proof of Colding's celebrated almost rigidity volume theorem via a quantitative version of our main result. We also discuss the case of a metric measure space equipped with a Dirichlet form admitting a spherical heat kernel.