We consider (bounded) Besicovitch sets in the Heisenberg group and prove that $L^p$ estimates for the Kakeya maximal function imply lower bounds for their Heisenberg Hausdorff dimension.
The Besicovitch covering property (BCP) is known to be one of the fundamental tools in measure theory, and more generally, a usefull property for numerous purposes in analysis and geometry. We prove both sufficient and necessary criteria for the validity of BCP in the first Heisenberg group equipped with a homogeneous distance. Beyond recovering all previously known results about the validity or non validity of BCP in this setting, we get simple descriptions of new large classes of homogeneous distances satisfying BCP. We also obtain a full characterization of rotationally invariant distances …
Our main result is a positive answer to the question whether one can find homogeneous distances on the Heisenberg groups that have the Besicovitch Covering Property (BCP). This property is well known to be one of the fundamental tools of measure theory, with strong connections with the theory of differentiation of measures. We prove that BCP is satisfied by the homogeneous distances whose unit ball centered at the origin coincides with an Euclidean ball. Such homogeneous distances do exist on any Carnot group by a result of Hebisch and Sikora. In the Heisenberg groups, they are related to the …
We prove that the Besicovitch Covering Property (BCP) does not hold for some classes of homogeneous quasi-distances on Carnot groups of step 3 and higher. As a special case we get that, in Carnot groups of step 3 and higher, BCP is not satisfied for those homogeneous distances whose unit ball centered at the origin coincides with a Euclidean ball centered at the origin. This result comes in constrast with the case of the Heisenberg groups where such distances satisfy BCP.
We pose the following conjecture: (*) If A is the union of line segments in R^n, and B is the union of the corresponding full lines then the Hausdorff dimensions of A and B agree. We prove that this conjecture would imply that every Besicovitch set (compact set that contains line segments in every direction) in R^n has Hausdorff dimension at least n-1 and (upper) Minkowski dimension n. We also prove that conjecture (*) holds if the Hausdorff dimension of B is at most 2, so in particular it holds in the plane.
We define Kakeya sets in the Heisenberg group and show that the Heisenberg Hausdorff dimension of Kakeya sets in the first Heisenberg group is at least 3. This lower bound is sharp since, under our definition, the $\{xoy\}$-plane is a Kakeya set with Heisenberg Hausdorff dimension 3.
This paper studies the Hausdorff dimension of the intersection of isotropic projections of subsets of $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$, as well as dimension of intersections of sets with isotropic planes. It is shown that if $A$ and $B$ are Borel subsets of $\mathbb{R}^{2n}$ of dimension greater than m, then for a positive measure set of isotropic m-planes, the intersection of the images of $A$ and $B$ under orthogonal projections onto these planes have positive Hausdorff $m$-measure. In addition, if $A$ is a measurable set of Hausdorff dimension greater than $m$, then there is a set $B\subset\mathbb{R}^{2n}…
We show that there is a sequence of subsets of each discrete Heisenberg group for which the non-singular ergodic theorem holds. The sequence depends only on the group; it works for any of its non-singular actions. To do this we use a metric which was recently shown by Le Donne and Rigot to have the Besicovitch covering property and then apply an adaptation of Hochman's proof of the multiparameter non-singular ergodic theorem. An exposition of how one proves non-singular ergodic theorems of this type is also included, along with a new proof for one of the key steps.
The classical isodiametric inequality in the Euclidean space says that balls maximize the volume among all sets with a given diameter. We consider in this paper the case of Carnot groups. We prove that for any Carnot group equipped with a Haar measure one can find a homogeneous distance for which this fails to hold. We also consider Carnot-Caratheodory distances and prove that this also fails for these distances as soon as there are length minimizing curves that stop to be minimizing in finite time. Next we study some connections with the comparison between Hausdorff and spherical Hausdorff me…
This paper establishes connections between the group-Fourier transform and the geometry of measures in the Heisenberg group. Firstly, it is shown that if the Fourier transform of a compactly supported, finite, Radon measure is square integrable, then the measure must have a square integrable density. If it's Fourier transform is integrable, the the measure must have a continuous density. In addition, an alternative formulation of the Fourier transform on the Heisenberg group is used to show that energies of measures can be computed via integrals on an appropriate frequency space. This in turns…
We show that if $A$ is a closed subset of the Heisenberg group whose vertical projections are nowhere dense, then the complement of $A$ is quasiconvex. In particular, closed sets which are null sets for the cc-Hausdorff $3$-measure have quasiconvex complements. Conversely, we exhibit a compact totally disconnected set of Hausdorff dimension three whose complement is not quasiconvex.
We investigate metric properties of level sets of horizontally differentiable maps defined on the first Heisenberg group $(\Bbb{H}^1,d_{cc})$ equipped with the standard sub-Riemannian structure. In particular, we present an exhaustive analysis in a new case of a map $F\in C^1_H(\Bbb{H}^1, \Bbb{R}^2)$ with surjective horizontal differential (an analogue of the classical implicit function theorem). Among other results, we show that a level set of such map is locally a simple curve of Hausdorff sub-Riemannian dimension 2, but, surprisingly, in general its two-dimensional Hausdorff measure can be …
We study the behavior of Sobolev mappings defined on the Heisenberg groups with respect to a foliation by left cosets of a horizontal homogeneous subgroup. We quantitatively estimate, in terms of Euclidean Hausdorff dimension, the size of the set of cosets that are mapped onto sets of high dimension. The proof of our main result combines ideas of Gehring and Mostow about the absolute continuity of quasiconformal mappings with Mattila's projection and slicing machinery.
We study the family of vertical projections whose fibers are right cosets of horizontal planes in the Heisenberg group, $\mathbb{H}^n$. We prove lower bounds for Hausdorff dimension distortion of sets under these mappings, with respect to the Euclidean metric and also the natural quotient metric which we show behaves like the Euclidean metric in this context. Our bounds are sharp in a large part of the dimension range, and we give conjectural sharp lower bounds for the remaining range. Our approach also lets us improve the known almost sure lower bound for the standard family of vertical proje…
Elementary sub-Riemannian geometry on the Heisenberg group H(n) provides a compact picture of symplectic geometry. Any Hamiltonian diffeomorphism on $R^{2n}$ lifts to a volume preserving bi-Lipschitz homeomorphisms of H(n), with the use of its generating function. Any curve of a flow of such homeomorphisms deviates from horizontality by the Hamiltonian of the flow. From the metric point of view this means that any such curve has Hausdorff dimension 2 and the $\mathcal{H}^{2}$ (area) density equal to the Hamiltonian. The non-degeneracy of the Hofer distance is a direct consequence of this fact.
We initiate the study of an intrinsic notion of Diophantine approximation on a rational Carnot group $G$. If $G$ has Hausdorff dimension $Q$, we show that its Diophantine exponent is equal to $(Q+1)/Q$, generalizing the case $G=\mathbb R^n$. We furthermore obtain a precise asymptotic on the count of rational approximations. We then focus on the case of the Heisenberg group $\mathbb H^n$, distinguishing between two notions of Diophantine approximation by rational points in $\mathbb H^n$: Carnot Diophantine approximation and Siegel Diophantine approximation. After computing the Siegel Diophantin…
In Carnot groups of step 2 we consider sets having maximal or minimal possible homogeneous Hausdorff dimension compared to their Euclidean one: in the first case we prove that they must be in a sense vertical, that is a large part of these sets can lie off horizontal planes through their points, and in the latter case close to horizontal. The examples that had been used to prove the sharpness of the sub-Riemannian versus Euclidean dimension comparison intuitively satisfied these geometric properties, which we here quantify and prove to be necessary. We also show the sharpness of our statements…
In this dissertation we define a generalization of Kakeya sets in certain metric spaces. Kakeya sets in Euclidean spaces are sets of zero Lebesgue measure containing a segment of length one in every direction. A famous conjecture, known as Kakeya conjecture, states that the Hausdorff dimension of any Kakeya set should equal the dimension of the space. It was proved only in the plane, whereas in higher dimensions both geometric and arithmetic combinatorial methods were used to obtain partial results. In the first part of the thesis we define generalized Kakeya sets in metric spaces satisfying c…
This paper is related to the problem of finding a good notion of rectifiability in sub-Riemannian geometry. In particular, we study which kind of results can be expected for smooth hypersurfaces in Carnot groups. Our main contribution will be a consequence of the following result: there exists a $C^{\infty}$ hypersurface $S$ without characteristic points that has uncountably many pairwise non-isomorphic tangent groups on every positive-measure subset. The example is found in a Carnot group of topological dimension 8, it has Hausdorff dimension 12 and so we use on it the Hausdorff measure $\mat…
We prove that any corank 1 Carnot group of dimension $k+1$ equipped with a left-invariant measure satisfies the $\mathrm{MCP}(K,N)$ if and only if $K \leq 0$ and $N \geq k+3$. This generalizes the well known result by Juillet for the Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}_{k+1}$ to a larger class of structures, which admit non-trivial abnormal minimizing curves. The number $k+3$ coincides with the geodesic dimension of the Carnot group, which we define here for a general metric space. We discuss some of its properties, and its relation with the curvature exponent (the least $N$ such that the $\mathrm{MC…