Improved intermediate asymptotics for the heat equation

This letter is devoted to results on intermediate asymptotics for the heat equation. We study the convergence towards a stationary solution in self-similar variables. By assuming the equality of some moments of the initial data and of the stationary solution, we get improved convergence rates using entropy / entropy-production methods. We establish the equivalence of the exponential decay of the entropies with new, improved functional inequalities in restricted classes of functions. This letter is the counterpart in a linear framework of a recent work on fast diffusion equations, see [8]. Results extend to the case of a Fokker-Planck equation with a general confining potential.