The rigidity and stability of gradient estimates

Abstract

In this note, we obtain the rigidity of the sharp Cheng-Yau gradient estimate for positive harmonic functions on surfaces with nonegative Gaussian curvature, the rigidity of the sharp Li-Yau gradient estimate for positive solutions to heat equations and the related estimates for Dirichlet Green's functions on Riemannian manifolds with nonnegative Ricci curvature. Moreover, we also obtain the corresponding stability results.