Given an elliptic operator \(L= - {{\,\textrm{div}\,}}(A \nabla \cdot )\) subject to mixed boundary conditions on an open subset of \(\mathbb {R}^d\) , we study the relation between Gaussian pointwise estimates for the kernel of the associated heat semigroup, Hölder continuity of L-harmonic functions and the growth of the Dirichlet energy. To this end, we generalize an equivalence theorem of Auscher and Tchamitchian to the case of mixed boundary conditions and to open sets far beyond Lipschitz domains. Yet, we prove the consistency of our abstract result by encompassing operators with real-valued coefficients and their small complex perturbations into one of the aforementioned equivalent properties. The resulting kernel bounds open the door for developing a harmonic analysis for the associated semigroups on rough open sets.
