Sharp Sobolev inequalities on noncompact Riemannian manifolds with $$\textsf{Ric}\ge 0$$ via optimal transport theory

Abstract

In their seminal work, Cordero-Erausquin, Nazaret and Villani (Adv Math 182(2):307-332, 2004) proved sharp Sobolev inequalities in Euclidean spaces via Optimal Transport, raising the question whether their approach is powerful enough to produce sharp Sobolev inequalities also on Riemannian manifolds. By using \(L^1\)-optimal transport approach, the compact case has been successfully treated by Cavalletti and Mondino (Geom Topol 21:603-645, 2017), even on metric measure spaces verifying the synthetic lower Ricci curvature bound. In the present paper we affirmatively answer the above question for noncompact Riemannian manifolds with non-negative Ricci curvature; namely, by using Optimal Transport theory with quadratic distance cost, sharp \(L^p\)-Sobolev and \(L^p\)-logarithmic Sobolev inequalities (both for \(p>1\) and \(p=1\)) are established, where the sharp constants contain the asymptotic volume ratio arising from precise asymptotic properties of the Talentian and Gaussian bubbles, respectively. As a byproduct, we give an alternative, elementary proof to the main result of do Carmo and Xia (Math 140:818-826, 2004) and subsequent results, concerning the quantitative volume non-collapsing estimates on Riemannian manifolds with non-negative Ricci curvature that support Sobolev inequalities.