Kinetic Brownian motion on Riemannian manifolds

Abstract: We consider in this work a one parameter family of hypoelliptic diffusion processes on the unit tangent bundle $T^1 \mathcal M$ of a Riemannian manifold $(\mathcal M,g)$, collectively called kinetic Brownian motions, that are random perturbations of the geodesic flow, with a parameter $\sigma$ quantifying the size of the noise. Projection on $\mathcal M$ of these processes provides random $C^1$ paths in $\mathcal M$. We show, both qualitively and quantitatively, that the laws of these $\mathcal M$-valued paths provide an interpolation between geodesic and Brownian motions. This qualitative description of kinetic Brownian motion as the parameter $\sigma$ varies is complemented by a thourough study of its long time asymptotic behaviour on rotationally invariant manifolds, when $\sigma$ is fixed, as we are able to give a complete description of its Poisson boundary in geometric terms.