The Feynman–Kac formula and Harnack inequality for degenerate diffusions

We study various probabilistic and analytical properties of a class of degenerate diffusion operators arising in population genetics, the so-called generalized Kimura diffusion operators Epstein and Mazzeo [SIAM J. Math. Anal. 42 (2010) 568–608; Degenerate Diffusion Operators Arising in Population Biology (2013) Princeton University Press; Applied Mathematics Research Express (2016)]. Our main results are a stochastic representation of weak solutions to a degenerate parabolic equation with singular lower-order coefficients and the proof of the scale-invariant Harnack inequality for nonnegative solutions to the Kimura parabolic equation. The stochastic representation of solutions that we establish is a considerable generalization of the classical results on Feynman–Kac formulas concerning the assumptions on the degeneracy of the diffusion matrix, the boundedness of the drift coefficients and the a priori regularity of the weak solutions.