Yet another heat semigroup characterization of BV functions on Riemannian manifolds

Abstract

This paper provides a characterization of functions of bounded variation (BV) in a compact Riemannian manifold in terms of the short time behavior of the heat semigroup. In particular, the main result proves that the total variation of a function equals the limit characterizing the space BV. The proof is carried out following two fully independent approaches, a probabilistic and an analytic one. Each method presents different advantages.