Abstract

A classical result of H.J Brascamp and E.H. Lieb says that the ground state eigenfunction for the Laplacian in convex regions (and of Schr ̈odinger operators with convex potentials on Rn) is log-concave. A proof can be given (interpreted) in terms of the finite dimensional distributions of Brownian motion. Some years ago the speaker raised similar questions (and made some con- jectures) when the Brownian motion is replaced by other stochastic processes and in particular those with transition probabilities given by the heat kernel of the fractional Laplacian–the rota- tionally symmetric stable processes. These problems (for the most part) remain open even for the unit interval in one dimension. In this talk we elaborate on this topic and outline a proof of a result of M. Kaßmann and L. Silvestre concerning superharmonicity of eigenfunctions for certain fractional powers of the Laplacian. Our proof is joint work with D. DeBlassie.