2026-07-072026-07-07http://salesiana.dossiersoluciones.com/handle/123456789/78290Lower bounds on Ricci curvature limit the volumes of sets and the existence of harmonic functions on Riemannian manifolds. In 1975, Shing Tung Yau proved that a complete noncompact manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature has no nonconstant harmonic functions of sublinear growth. In the same paper, Yau used this result to prove that a complete noncompact manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature has at least linear volume growth. In this paper, we prove the following theorem concerning harmonic functions on these manifolds. Theorem: Let M be a complete noncompact manifold with nonnegative Ricci curvature and at most linear volume growth. If there exists a nonconstant harmonic function, f, of polynomial growth of any given degree q, then the manifold splits isometrically, M= N x R.To appear in Pacific Journal of Mathematics, submitted April 1998, 7ppDifferential Geometry53C20; 31C05text