In a 2013 paper, Cheeger and Kleiner introduced a new type of dimension for metric spaces, the "Lipschitz dimension". We study the dimension-theoretic properties of Lipschitz dimension, including its behavior under Gromov-Hausdorff convergence, its (non-)invariance under various classes of mappings, and its relationship to the Nagata dimension and Cheeger's "analytic dimension". We compute the Lipschitz dimension of various natural spaces, including Carnot groups, snowflakes of Euclidean spaces, metric trees, and Sierpinski carpets. As corollaries, we obtain a short proof of a quasi-isometric non-embedding result for Carnot groups and a necessary condition for the existence of non-degenerate Lipschitz maps between certain spaces.
This note details how a recent structure theorem for normal $1$-currents proved by the first and third author allows to prove a conjecture of Cheeger concerning the structure of Lipschitz differentiability spaces. More precisely, we show that the push-forward of the measure from a Lipschitz differentiability space under a chart is absolutely continuous with respect to Lebesgue measure.
Using an inverse system of metric graphs as in: J. Cheeger and B. Kleiner, "Inverse limit spaces satisfying a Poincaré inequality", we provide a simple example of a metric space $X$ that admits Poincaré inequalities for a continuum of mutually singular measures.
Recently, in the metric spaces, Le Donne and the author introduced the so-called intrinsically Lipschitz sections. The main aim of this note is to adapt Cheeger theory for the classical Lipschitz constants in our new context. More precisely, we define the intrinsic Cheeger energy from $L^2(Y,\R^s)$ to $[0,+\infty],$ where $(Y,d_Y,\mm)$ is a metric measure space and we characterize it in terms of a suitable notion of relaxed slope. In order to get this result, in more general context, we establish some properties of the intrinsically Lipschitz constants like the Leibniz formula, the product for…
Lipschitz light maps, defined by Cheeger and Kleiner, are a class of non-injective "foldings" between metric spaces that preserve some geometric information. We prove that if a metric space $(X,d)$ has Nagata dimension $n$, then its "snowflakes" $(X,d^ε)$ admit Lipschitz light maps to $\mathbb{R}^n$ for all $0<ε<1$. This can be seen as an analog of a well-known theorem of Assouad. We also provide an application to a new variant of conformal dimension.
For the importance of differentiation theorems in metric spaces (starting with Pansu Rademacher type theorem in Carnot groups) and relations with rigidity of embeddings see the section 1.2 in Cheeger and Kleiner paper arXiv:math/0611954 and its bibliographic references. Here we propose another type of differentiation theorem, which does not involve measures. It is therefore different from Rademacher type theorems. Instead, this differentiation theorem (and the concept of uniformly topological derivable function) is formulated in terms of filters in topological spaces.
Suppose that $(X,d,μ)$ is a metric measure space of finite Hausdorff dimension and that, for every Lipschitz $f \colon X \to \mathbb R$, $\operatorname{Lip}(f,\cdot)$ is dominated by every upper gradient of $f$. We show that $X$ is a Lipschitz differentiability space, and the differentiable structure of $X$ has dimension at most $\dim_{\mathrm{H}} X$. Since our assumptions are satisfied whenever $X$ is doubling and satisfies a Poincaré inequality, we thus obtain a new proof of Cheeger's generalisation of Rademacher's theorem. Our approach uses Guth's multilinear Kakeya inequality for neighbour…
We prove metric differentiation for differentiability spaces in the sense of Cheeger. As corollaries we give a new proof that the minimal generalized upper gradient coincides with the pointwise Lipschitz constant for Lipschitz functions on PI spaces, a proof that the Lip-lip constant of any Lip-lip space in the sense of Keith is equal to $1$, and new nonembeddability results.
We demonstrate the necessity of a Poincaré type inequality for those metric measure spaces that satisfy Cheeger's generalization of Rademacher's theorem for all Lipschitz functions taking values in a Banach space with the Radon-Nikodym property. This is done by showing the existence of a rich structure of curve fragments that connect near by points, similar in nature to Semmes's pencil of curves for the standard Poincaré inequality. Using techniques similar to Cheeger-Kleiner, we show that our conditions are also sufficient. We also develop another characterization of "RNP Lipschitz differenti…
Let $(X,d,μ)$ be a complete metric measure space, with $μ$ a locally doubling measure, that supports a local weak $L^2$-Poincaré inequality. By assuming a heat semigroup type curvature condition, we prove that Cheeger-harmonic functions are Lipschitz continuous on $(X,d,μ)$. Gradient estimates for Cheeger-harmonic functions and solutions to a class of non-linear Poisson type equations are presented.
A well-known class of questions asks the following: If $X$ and $Y$ are metric measure spaces and $f:X\rightarrow Y$ is a Lipschitz mapping whose image has positive measure, then must $f$ have large pieces on which it is bi-Lipschitz? Building on methods of David (who is not the present author) and Semmes, we answer this question in the affirmative for Lipschitz mappings between certain types of Ahlfors $s$-regular, topological $d$-manifolds. In general, these manifolds need not be bi-Lipschitz embeddable in any Euclidean space. To prove the result, we use some facts on the Gromov-Hausdorff con…
Recently Gigli developed a Sobolev calculus on non-smooth spaces using module theory. In this paper it is shown that his theory fits nicely into the theory of differentiability spaces initiated by Cheeger, Keith and others. A relaxation procedure for $L^p$-valued subadditive functionals is presented and a relationship between the module generated by a functional and the one generated by its relaxation is given. In the framework of differentiability spaces, which includes so called PI- and $RCD(K,N)$-spaces, the Lipschitz module is pointwise finite dimensional. A general renorming theorem toget…
We show that a geodesic metric space which does not admit bilipschitz embeddings into Banach spaces with the Radon-Nikodým property does not necessarily contain a bilipschitz image of a thick family of geodesics. This is done by showing that any thick family of geodesics is not Markov convex, and comparing this result with results of Cheeger-Kleiner, Lee-Naor, and Li. The result contrasts with the earlier result of the author that any Banach space without the Radon-Nikodým property contains a bilipschitz image of a thick family of geodesics.
We prove a version of Peter Jones' Analyst's traveling salesman theorem in a class of highly non-Euclidean metric spaces introduced by Laakso and generalized by Cheeger-Kleiner. These spaces are constructed as inverse limits of metric graphs, and include examples which are doubling and have a Poincare inequality. We show that a set in one of these spaces is contained in a rectifiable curve if and only if it is quantitatively "flat" at most locations and scales, where flatness is measured with respect to so-called monotone geodesics. This provides a first examination of quantitative rectifiabil…
We study Lipschitz differentiability spaces, a class of metric measure spaces introduced by Cheeger. We show that if an Ahlfors regular Lipschitz differentiability space has charts of maximal dimension, then, at almost every point, all its tangents are uniformly rectifiable. In particular, at almost every point, such a space admits a tangent that is isometric to a finite-dimensional Banach space. In contrast, we also show that if an Ahlfors regular Lipschitz differentiability space has charts of non-maximal dimension, then these charts are strongly unrectifiable in the sense of Ambrosio-Kirchh…
We prove that if a geodesic metric measure space satisfies a comparison condition for isoperimetric profile and if the observable variance is maximal, then the space is foliated by minimal geodesics, where the observable variance is defined to be the supremum of the variance of 1-Lipschitz functions on the space. Our result can be considered as a variant of Cheeger-Gromoll's splitting theorem and also of Cheng's maximal diameter theorem. As an application, we obtain a new isometric splitting theorem for a complete weighted Riemannian manifold with a positive Bakry-Émery Ricci curvature.
When a discrete group admits a convex-cocompact action on a non-compact rank-one symmetric space, there is a natural lower bound for the Hausdorff dimension of the limit set, given by the Ahlfors regular conformal dimension of the boundary of the group. We show that equality is achieved precisely when the group stabilizes an isometric copy of some non-compact rank-one symmetric space on which it acts with compact quotient. This generalizes a theorem of Bonk-Kleiner, who proved it in the case of real hyperbolic space. To prove our main theorem, we study tangents of Lipschitz differentiability s…
The paper contains the following results and observations: (1) There exists a sequence of unweighted graphs $\{G_n\}_n$ with maximum degree 3 such that a Banach space $X$ has no nontrivial cotype iff $\{G_n\}_n$ admit uniformly bilipschitz embeddings into $X$; (2) The same for Banach spaces with no nontrivial type; (3) A sequence $\{G_n\}$ characterizing Banach spaces with no nontrivial cotype in the sense described above can be chosen to be a sequence of bounded degree expanders; (4) The infinite diamond does not admit a bilipschitz embedding into Banach spaces with the Radon-Nikodým property…
Following Weaver we study generalized differential operators, called (metric) derivations, and their linear algebraic properties. In particular, for k = 1, 2 we show that measures on k-dimensional Euclidean space that induce rank-k modules of derivations must be absolutely continuous to Lebesgue measure. An analogous result holds true for measures concentrated on k-rectifiable sets with respect to k-dimensional Hausdorff measure. Though formulated for Euclidean spaces, these rigidity results also apply to the metric space setting and specifically, to spaces that support a doubling measure and …
On metric spaces equipped with doubling measures, we prove that a differentiability theorem holds for Lipschitz functions if and only if the space supports nontrivial (metric) derivations in the sense of Weaver that satisfy an additional infinitesmal condition. In particular it extends the case of spaces supporting Poincaré inequalities, as first proven by Cheeger, as well as the case of spaces satisfying the Lip-lip condition of Keith. The proof relies on generalised "change of variable" arguments that are made possible by the linear algebraic structure of derivations. As a crucial step in th…
Inspired by a recent work of Wang-Zhao, in this note we prove that for a fixed $n$-dimensional closed Riemannian manifold $(M^n, g)$, if an $\mathrm{RCD}(K, n)$ space $(X, \mathsf{d}, \mathfrak{m})$ is Gromov-Hausdorff close to $M^n$, then there exists a regular homeomorphism $F$ from $X$ to $M^n$ such that $F$ is Lipschitz continuous and that $F^{-1}$ is Hölder continuous, where the Lipschitz constant of $F$, the Hölder exponent and the Hölder constant of $F^{-1}$ can be chosen arbitrary close to $1$. This is sharp in the sense that in general such a map cannot be improved to being bi-Lipschi…
The differentiation theory of Lipschitz functions taking values in a Banach space with the Radon-Nikodým property (RNP), originally developed by Cheeger-Kleiner, has proven to be a powerful tool to prove non-biLipschitz embeddability of metric spaces into these Banach spaces. Important examples of metric spaces to which this theory applies include nonabelian Carnot groups and Laakso spaces. In search of a metric characterization of the RNP, Ostrovskii found another class of spaces that do not biLipschitz embed into RNP spaces, namely spaces containing thick families of geodesics. Our first res…
These lecture notes contain an extended version of the material presented in the C.I.M.E. summer course in 2017, aiming to give a detailed introduction to the metric Sobolev theory. The notes are divided in four main parts. The first one is devoted to a preliminary study of the underlying topological, metric, and measure-theoretic aspects of a general extended metric-topological measure space $\mathbb X=(X,τ,\mathsf d,\mathfrak m)$. The second part is devoted to the construction of the Cheeger energy, initially defined on a distinguished unital algebra of Lipschitz functions. The third part de…
We introduce a notion of intrinsically Hölder graphs in metric spaces. Following a recent paper of Le Donne and the author, we prove some relevant results as the Ascoli-Arzelà compactness Theorem, Ahlfors-David regularity and the Extension Theorem for this class of sections. In the first part of this note, thanks to Cheeger theory, we define suitable sets in order to obtain a vector space over $\R$ or $\C,$ a convex set and an equivalence relation for intrinsically Hölder graphs. These last three properties are new also in the Lipschitz case. Throughout the paper, we use basic mathematical too…
We construct a canonical differential structure on the configuration space $Υ$ over a singular base space $X$ and with a general invariant measure $μ$ on $Υ$. We present an analytic structure on $Υ$, constructing a strongly local Dirichlet form $\mathcal E$ on $L^2(Υ, μ)$ for $μ$ in a large class of probability measures. We then investigate the geometric structure of the extended metric measure space $Υ$ endowed with the $L^2$-transportation extended distance $\mathsf{d}_Υ$ and with the measure $μ$. By establishing Rademacher- and Sobolev-to-Lipschitz-type properties for $\mathcal E$, we final…
