Abstract: | Let be a probability space, and a symmetric linear contraction operator on with and . We prove that is the optimal sufficient condition for to have a spectral gap. Moreover, the optimal sufficient conditions are obtained, respectively, for the defective log-Sobolev and for the defective Poincaré inequality to imply the existence of a spectral gap. Finally, we construct a symmetric, hyperbounded, ergodic contraction -semigroup without a spectral gap. |