Equivalence conditions for on-diagonal upper bounds of heat kernels on self-similar spaces

We obtain the equivalence conditions for an on-diagonal upper bound of heat kernels on self-similar measure energy spaces. In particular, this upper bound of the heat kernel is equivalent to the discreteness of the spectrum of the generator of the Dirichlet form, and to the global Poincaré inequality. The key ingredient of the proof is to obtain the Nash inequality from the global Poincaré inequality. We give two examples of families of spaces where the global Poincaré inequality is easily derived. They are the post-critically finite (p.c.f.) self-similar sets with harmonic structure and the products of self-similar measure energy spaces. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.