TY - JOUR T1 - The intrinsic hypoelliptic Laplacian and its heat kernel on unimodular Lie groups JF - J. Funct. Anal. 256 (2009) 2621-2655 Y1 - 2009 A1 - Andrei A. Agrachev A1 - Ugo Boscain A1 - Jean-Paul Gauthier A1 - Francesco Rossi AB - We present an invariant definition of the hypoelliptic Laplacian on sub-Riemannian structures with constant growth vector, using the Popp\\\'s volume form introduced by Montgomery. This definition generalizes the one of the Laplace-Beltrami operator in Riemannian geometry. In the case of left-invariant problems on unimodular Lie groups we prove that it coincides with the usual sum of squares.\\nWe then extend a method (first used by Hulanicki on the Heisenberg group) to compute explicitly the kernel of the hypoelliptic heat equation on any unimodular Lie group of type I. The main tool is the noncommutative Fourier transform. We then study some relevant cases: SU(2), SO(3), SL(2) (with the metrics inherited by the Killing form), and the group SE(2) of rototranslations of the plane.\\nOur study is motivated by some recent results about the cut and conjugate loci on these sub-Riemannian manifolds. The perspective is to understand how singularities of the sub-Riemannian distance reflect on the kernel of the corresponding hypoelliptic heat equation. UR - http://hdl.handle.net/1963/2669 U1 - 1428 U2 - Mathematics U3 - Functional Analysis and Applications ER -