Spectral monotonicity under Gaussian convolution

Abstract

We show that the Poincar\'e constant of a log-concave measure in Euclidean space is monotone increasing along the heat flow. In fact, the entire spectrum of the associated Laplace operator is monotone decreasing. Two proofs of these results are given. The first proof analyzes a curvature term of a certain time-dependent diffusion, and the second proof constructs a contracting transport map following the approach of Kim and Milman.