Closure Properties of Solutions to Heat Inequalities

We prove that if u ₁,u ₂:(0,∞)×ℝ ^d →(0,∞) are sufficiently well-behaved solutions to certain heat inequalities on ℝ ^d then the function u:(0,∞)×ℝ ^d →(0,∞) given by also satisfies a heat inequality of a similar type provided . On iterating, this result leads to an analogous statement concerning n-fold convolutions. As a corollary, we give a direct heat-flow proof of the sharp n-fold Young convolution inequality and its reverse form. Both authors were supported by EPSRC grant EP/E022340/1.