ABSTRACT. We construct the asymptotics as t ---* 0 of the trace of the operator exp(-tP) for an elliptic operator P on a manifold with conical points.KEY WORDS: elliptic operator,-heat kernel, trace asymptotics, manifold with conical points, Green's function.
w IntroductionLet P be a self-adjoint positive definite elliptic operator of order 21 in the space L2 on a closed compact manifold M of dimension m. For the case in which the coefficients of the operator are smooth, the following statement is well known (e.g., see [1]
H(t, x, x) ..~ ~ ck(z)t (-'~+2k)/(2') , t --* +0.( 1) k=0This azymptotics provides important information on the operator P and the geometry of the manifold (see ill).If the coefficients of the operator are discontinuous at some point, then the expansion becomes nonuniform and the coefficients ck(x) axe singular at the point of discontinuity. We consider an elliptic operator on a manifold M with a conical point x0. This means (e.g., see [21)that M\{x0} is an m-dimensional C ~ manifold and there exists a neighborhood U of the point x0 and a mapping k of this neighborhood (a diffeomorphism preserving the conical structure) onto a neighborhood of the vertex 0 of a conical manifold X. We denote by S a fixed directing submartifold of X (S is a compact manifold of dimension m -1 intersecting each ray from X at one point). For the points of X and hence for the points in the neighborhood U we can introduce the polar coordinates x = r, w, where r E R+, w E S and r-ix E S.To simplify the notation, we make no distinction between a function u on U and the function u o k -1 on X. We also choose a positive density dx on M smooth on M \ {x0 } and assume that dx = r m-1 dr dw in the neighborhood U, where dw is a smooth positive density on S. Of course, the manifold can have any number of conical points; in what follows, we consider only one such point x0.An important example of an operator on a manifold with a conical point is an operator on a closed smooth manifold with symbol having an isolated singularity at the point. At this point, the principal symbol must have the limit that can depend on the direction of approach, and lower terms can have power-law singularities. In this case, X = R "~ and S = S '~-] .The operator is defined in the space L2(M) of Cd-valued functions via the quadratic form (Pu, u)= fM ~ (aat,a2(x)D~tu, D'~u) dx, aat,a2(x)=a*2,at(x), D~j = -iO~j ,