In mathematics — specifically, in measure theory — Malliavin's absolute continuity lemma is a result due to the French mathematician Paul Malliavin that plays a foundational rôle in the regularity (smoothness) theorems of the Malliavin calculus. Malliavin's lemma gives a sufficient condition for a finite Borel measure to be absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure.

Let μ be a finite Borel measure on n-dimensional Euclidean space Rⁿ. Suppose that, for every x ∈ Rⁿ, there exists a constant C = C(x) such that

${\displaystyle \left|\int _{\mathbf {R} ^{n}}\mathrm {D} \varphi (y)(x)\,\mathrm {d} \mu (y)\right|\leq C(x)\|\varphi \|_{\infty }}$

for every C^∞ function φ : Rⁿ → R with compact support. Then μ is absolutely continuous with respect to n-dimensional Lebesgue measure λⁿ on Rⁿ. In the above, Dφ(y) denotes the Fréchet derivative of φ at y and ||φ||_∞ denotes the supremum norm of φ.

• Bell, Denis R. (2006). The Malliavin calculus. Mineola, NY: Dover Publications Inc. pp. x+113. ISBN 0-486-44994-7. MR2250060 (See section 1.3)
• Malliavin, Paul (1978). "Stochastic calculus of variations and hypoelliptic operators". Proceedings of the International Symposium on Stochastic Differential Equations (Res. Inst. Math. Sci., Kyoto Univ., Kyoto, 1976). New York: Wiley. pp. 195–263. MR536013