Generalized maximum principles and stochastic completeness for pseudo-Hermitian manifolds

Abstract

In this paper, we establish a generalized maximum principle for pseudo-Hermitian manifolds. As corollaries, Omori-Yau type maximum principles for pseudo-Hermitian manifolds are deduced. Moreover, we prove that the stochastic completeness for the heat semigroup generated by the sub-Laplacian is equivalent to the validity of a weak form of the generalized maximum principles. Finally, we give some applications of these generalized maximum principles.