We deform a map into a Riemannian manifold that is horizontal with respect to a submersion onto a non-positively curved manifold and satisfies a Chow condition into a harmonic one through a horizontal homotopy.
We introduce a new class of unbounded model subdomains of $\mathbb{C}^2$ for the $\Box_b$ problem. Unlike previous finite type models, these domains need not be bounded by algebraic varieties. In this paper we obtain precise global estimates for the Carnot-Carathéodory metric induced on the boundary of such domains by the real and imaginary parts of the CR vector field.
The paper sketches a recent progress and formulates several open problems in studying equivariant quasiconformal and quasisymmetric homeomorphisms in negatively curved spaces as well as geometry and topology of noncompact geometrically finite negatively curved manifolds and their boundaries at infinity having Carnot--Carathéodory structures. Especially, the most interesting are complex hyperbolic manifolds with Cauchy--Riemannian structure at infinity, which occupy a distinguished niche and whose properties make them surprisingly different from real hyperbolic ones.
We study multi-parameter Carnot-Caratheodory balls, generalizing results due to Nagel, Stein, and Wainger in the single parameter setting. The main technical result is seen as a uniform version of the theorem of Frobenius. In addition, we study maximal functions associated to certain multi-parameter families of Carnot-Caratheodory balls.
This paper is part of an undergraduate research project. We discuss the Heisenberg group H1, the three-dimensional space R3 equipped with one of two equivalent metrics, the Koranyi- and Carnot- Caratheodory metric. We show that the notion of length of curves for both metrics coincide, and that shortest curves, so-called geodesics, exist.
An intrinsic definition in terms of conformal capacity is proposed for the conformal type of a Carnot--Carathéodory space (parabolic or hyperbolic). Geometric criteria of conformal type are presented. They are closely related to the asymptotic geometry of the space at infinity and expressed in terms of the isoperimetric function and the growth of the area of geodesic spheres. In particular, it is proved that a sub-Riemannian manifold admits a conformal change of metric that makes it into a complete manifold of finite volume if and only if the manifold is of conformally parabolic type. Further …
In this paper we study the invariant Carnot-Caratheodory metrics on $SU(2)\simeq S^3$, $SO(3)$ and $SL(2)$ induced by their Cartan decomposition and by the Killing form. Beside computing explicitly geodesics and conjugate loci, we compute the cut loci (globally) and we give the expression of the Carnot-Caratheodory distance as the inverse of an elementary function. We then prove that the metric given on $SU(2)$ projects on the so called lens spaces $L(p,q)$. Also for lens spaces, we compute the cut loci (globally). For $SU(2)$ the cut locus is a maximal circle without one point. In all other c…
We extend Bony's propagation of support argument \cite{Bony} to $C^1$ solutions of the non-homogeneous sub-elliptic $p-$Laplacian associated to a system of smooth vector fields satisfying Hörmander's finite rank condition. As a consequence we prove a strong maximum principle and strong comparison principle that generalize results of Tolksdorf \cite{Tolksdorf}.
We find a different approach to define convex functions in the sub-Riemannian setting. A function on a sub-Riemannian manifold is nonholonomically geodesic convex if its restriction to any nonholonomic (straightest) geodesic is convex. In the case of Carnot groups, this definition coincides with that by Danniell-Garofalo-Nieuhn (equivalent to that by Lu-Manfredi-Stroffolini). Nonholonomic geodesics are defined using the horizontal connection. A new distance corresponding to the horizontal connection has been introduced and near regular points proven to be equivalent to the Carnot-Carathèodory …
A Carnot group $\mathbb{G}$ admits Lusin approximation for horizontal curves if for any absolutely continuous horizontal curve $γ$ in $\mathbb{G}$ and $\varepsilon>0$, there is a $C^1$ horizontal curve $Γ$ such that $Γ=γ$ and $Γ'=γ'$ outside a set of measure at most $\varepsilon$. We verify this property for free Carnot groups of step 2 and show that it is preserved by images of Lie group homomorphisms preserving the horizontal layer. Consequently, all step 2 Carnot groups admit Lusin approximation for horizontal curves.
We examine the theory of metric currents of Ambrosio and Kirchheim in the setting of spaces admitting differentiable structures in the sense of Cheeger and Keith. We prove that metric forms which vanish in the sense of Cheeger on a set must also vanish when paired with currents concentrated along that set. From this we deduce a generalization of the chain rule, and show that currents of absolutely continuous mass are given by integration against measurable $k$-vector fields. We further prove that if the underlying metric space is a Carnot group with its Carnot-Carathéodory distance, then every…
Given a real-valued function $c$ defined on the cartesian product of a generic Carnot group $\G$ and the first layer $V_1$ of its Lie algebra, we introduce a notion of $c$ horizontal convex ($c$ H-convex) function on $\G$ as the supremum of a suitable family of affine functions; this family is defined pointwisely, and depends strictly on the horizontal structure of the group. This abstract approach provides $c$ H-convex functions that, under appropriate assumptions on $c,$ are characterized by the nonemptiness of the $c$ H-subdifferential and, above all, are locally H-semiconvex, thereby admit…
The group of real 4 by 4 upper triangular matrices with 1s on the diagonal has a left-invariant subRiemannian (or Carnot-Caratheodory) structure whose underlying distribution corresponds to the superdiagonal. We prove that the associated subRiemannian geodesic flow is not completely integrable. This provides the first example of a Carnot group (graded nilpotent Lie group with an invariant subRiemannian structure supported on the generating subspace) with a non-integrable geodesic flow. We apply this result to prove that the centralizer for the corresponding quadratic ``quantum'' Hamiltonian in…
Carnot groups are distinguished spaces that are rich of structure: they are those Lie groups equipped with a path distance that is invariant by left-translations of the group and admit automorphisms that are dilations with respect to the distance. We present the basic theory of Carnot groups together with several remarks. We consider them as special cases of graded groups and as homogeneous metric spaces. We discuss the regularity of isometries in the general case of Carnot-Caratheodory spaces and of nilpotent metric Lie groups.
In arbitrary Carnot groups we study intrinsic graphs of maps with horizontal target. These graphs are $C^1_H$ regular exactly when the map is uniformly intrinsically differentiable. Our first main result characterizes the uniformly intrinsic differentiability by means of Hölder properties along the projections of left-invariant vector fields on the graph. We strengthen the result in step-2 Carnot groups for intrinsic real-valued maps by only requiring horizontal regularity. We remark that such a refinement is not possible already in the easiest step-3 group. As a by-product of independent inte…
We investigate the minimal surface problem in the three dimensional Heisenberg group, H, equipped with its standard Carnot-Caratheodory metric. Using a particular surface measure, we characterize minimal surfaces in terms of a sub-elliptic partial differential equation and prove an existence result for the Plateau problem in this setting. Further, we provide a link between our minimal surfaces and Riemannian constant mean curvature surfaces in H equipped with different Riemannian metrics approximating the Carnot-Caratheodory metric. We generate a large library of examples of minimal surfaces a…
In this paper we study the main geometric properties of the Carnot-Carathéodory (abbreviated CC) distance $\dc$ in the setting of $k$-step sub-Riemannian Carnot groups from many different points of view. An extensive study of the so-called normal CC-geodesics is given. We state and prove some related variational formulae and we find suitable Jacobi-type equations for normal CC-geodesics. One of our main results is a sub-Riemannian version of the Gauss Lemma. We show the existence of the metric normal for smooth non-characteristic hypersurfaces. We also compute the sub-Riemannian exponential ma…
Let G be a k-step Carnot group. We prove an isoperimetric-type inequality for compact C^2-smooth immersed hypersurfaces with boundary, involving the horizontal mean curvature of the hypersurface. This generalizes an inequality due to Michael and Simon, and Allard, independently. Some applications are discussed.
In Carnot-Caratheodory or sub-Riemannian geometry, one of the major open problems is whether the conclusions of Sard's theorem holds for the endpoint map, a canonical map from an infinite-dimensional path space to the underlying finite-dimensional manifold. The set of critical values for the endpoint map is also known as abnormal set, being the set of endpoints of abnormal extremals leaving the base point. We prove that a strong version of Sard's property holds for all step-2 Carnot groups and several other classes of Lie groups endowed with left-invariant distributions. Namely, we prove that …
We consider contact manifolds equipped with Carnot-Caratheodory metrics, and show that the Rumin complex is respected by Sobolev mappings: Pansu pullback induces a chain mapping between the smooth Rumin complex and the distributional Rumin complex. As a consequence, the Rumin flat complex -- the analog of the Whitney flat complex in the setting of contact manifolds -- is bilipschitz invariant. We also show that for Sobolev mappings between general Carnot groups, Pansu pullback induces a chain mapping when restricted to a certain differential ideal of the de Rham complex. Both results are appli…
A helical CR structure is a decomposition of a real Euclidean space into an even-dimensional horizontal subspace and its orthogonal vertical complement, together with an almost complex structure on the horizontal space and a marked vector in the vertical space. We prove an equivalence between such structures and step two Carnot groups equipped with a distinguished normal geodesic, and also between such structures and smooth real curves whose derivatives have constant Euclidean norm. As a consequence, we relate step two Carnot groups equipped with sub-Riemannian geodesics with this family of cu…
We study maximal horizontal subgroups of Carnot groups of Heisenberg type. We classify those of dimension half of that of the canonical distribution ("lagrangians") and illustrate some notable ones of small dimension. An infinitesimal classification of the arbitrary maximal horizontal submanifolds follows as a consequence.
This paper is a continuation of the previous work of the first author. We characterize a class of step-two groups introduced in \cite{Li19}, saying GM-groups, via some basic sub-Riemannian geometric properties, including the squared Carnot-Carathéodory distance, the cut locus, the classical cut locus, the optimal synthesis, etc. Also, the shortest abnormal set can be exhibited easily in such situation. Some examples of such groups are step-two groups of corank $2$, of Kolmogorov type, or those associated to quadratic CR manifolds. As a byproduct, the main goal in \cite{BBG12} is achieved from …
The notion of curvature discussed in this paper is a far going generalization of the Riemannian sectional curvature. It was first introduced by Agrachev, Barilari and Rizzi in arXiv:1306.5318, and it is defined for a wide class of optimal control problems: a unified framework including geometric structures such as Riemannian, sub-Riemannian, Finsler, and sub-Finsler structures. In this work we study the generalized sectional curvature of Carnot groups with rank-two distributions. In particular, we consider the Cartan group and Carnot groups with horizontal distribution of Goursat-type. In thes…
Jet spaces on $\mathbb R^n$ have been shown to have a canonical structure of stratified Lie groups (also known as Carnot groups). We construct jet spaces over stratified Lie groups adapted to horizontal differentiation and show that these jet spaces are themselves stratified Lie groups. Furthermore, we show that these jet spaces support a prolongation theory for contact maps, and in particular, a Bäcklund type theorem holds. A byproduct of these results is an embedding theorem that shows that every stratified Lie group of step $s+1$ can be embedded in a jet space over a stratified Lie group of…
We prove a quantitative bi-Lipschitz nonembedding theorem for the Heisenberg group with its Carnot-Carathéodory metric and apply it to give a lower bound on the integrality gap of the Goemans-Linial semidefinite relaxation of the Sparsest Cut problem.
We prove a quantitative openness theorem for $C^1$ submersions under suitable assumptions on the differential. We then apply our result to a class of exponential maps appearing in Carnot-Carathéodory spaces and we improve a classical completeness result by Palais.
The purpose of these notes is to explain parts of Gromov's survey of Carnot-Carathedory spaces, in the light of subsequent results of M. Rumin. Among the rich material provided by Gromov, most of which pertains to analysis on metric spaces, we choose to concentrate on the H{ö}lder equivalence problem for Carnot manifolds. The notes go to some extent into the PDE technique used by Gromov in order to construct horizontal submanifolds. Rumin's complex is explained too. The upshot is that both methods yield more or less the same conclusions as far as the H{ö}lder equivalence problem is concerned.
We show that canonical Carnot-Caratheodory spherical and horospherical metrics, which are defined on the boundary at infinity of every rank one symmetric space of non-compact type, are visual, i.e., they are bilipschitz equivalent with universal bilipschitz constants to the inverse exponent of Gromov products based in the space and on the boundary at infinity respectively.
In this paper we shall study smooth submanifolds immersed in a k-step Carnot group G of homogeneous dimension Q. Among other results, we shall prove an isoperimetric inequality for the case of a $C^2$-smooth compact hypersurface S with - or without - boundary $\partial S$; S and $\partial S$ are endowed with their homogeneous measures, actually equivalent to the intrinsic (Q-1)-dimensional and (Q-2)-dimensional Hausdorff measures with respect to some homogeneous metric $\varrho$ on G; see Section 5. This generalizes a classical inequality, involving the mean curvature of the hypersurface, prov…
This paper shows that when the Riemannian metric on a contact manifold is blown up along the direction orthogonal to the contact distribution, the corresponding harmonic forms rescaled and normalized in the $L^2$-norms will converge to Rumin's harmonic forms. This proves a conjecture in Gromov `` Carnot-Caratheodory spaces seen from within '', IHES preprint, 1994. This result can also be reformulated in terms of spectral sequences, after Forman, Mazzeo-Melrose. A key ingredient in the proof is the fact that the curvatures become unbounded in a controlled way.
This paper contributes to the study of sets of finite intrinsic perimeter in Carnot groups. Our intent is to characterize in which groups the only sets with constant intrinsic normal are the vertical half-spaces. Our viewpoint is algebraic: such a phenomenon happens if and only if the semigroup generated by each horizontal half-space is a vertical half-space. We call \emph{semigenerated} those Carnot groups with this property. For Carnot groups of nilpotency step 3 we provide a complete characterization of semigeneration in terms of whether such groups do not have any Engel-type quotients. Eng…
Gromov proposed to extract the (differential) geometric content of a sub-riemannian space exclusively from its Carnot-Carathéodory distance. One of the most striking features of a regular sub-riemannian space is that it has at any point a metric tangent space with the algebraic structure of a Carnot group, hence a homogeneous Lie group. Siebert characterizes homogeneous Lie groups as locally compact groups admitting a contracting and continuous one-parameter group of automorphisms. Siebert result has not a metric character. In these notes I show that sub-riemannian geometry may be described by…
In this article we study the validity of the Whitney $C^1$ extension property for horizontal curves in sub-Riemannian manifolds endowed with 1-jets that satisfy a first-order Taylor expansion compatibility condition. We first consider the equiregular case, where we show that the extension property holds true whenever a suitable non-singularity property holds for the input-output maps on the Carnot groups obtained by nilpotent approximation. We then discuss the case of sub-Riemannian manifolds with singular points and we show that all step-2 manifolds satisfy the $C^1$ extension property. We co…
In this paper, we consider a smooth connected finite-dimensional manifold $M$, an affine connection $\nabla$ with holonomy group $H^{\nabla}$ and $Δ$ a smooth completely non integrable distribution. We define the $Δ$-horizontal holonomy group $H^{\;\nabla}_Δ$ as the subgroup of $H^{\nabla}$ obtained by $\nabla$-parallel transporting frames only along loops tangent to $Δ$. We first set elementary properties of $H^{\;\nabla}_Δ$ and show how to study it using the rolling formalism (\cite{ChitourKokkonen}). In particular, it is shown that $H^{\;\nabla}_Δ$ is a Lie group. Moreover, we study an expl…
We introduce a sub-Riemannian analogue of the Bence-Merriman-Osher diffusion driven algorithm and show that it leads to weak solutions of the horizontal mean curvature flow of graphs over sub-Riemannian Carnot groups. The proof follows the nonlinear semi-group theory approach originally introduced by L. C. Evans in the Euclidean setting and is based on new results on the relation between sub-Riemannian heat flows of characteristic functions of subgraphs and the horizontal mean curvature of the corresponding graphs.
We introduce length dilatation structures on metric spaces, tempered dilatation structures and coherent projections and explore the relations between these objects and the Radon-Nikodym property and Gamma-convergence of length functionals. Then we show that the main properties of sub-riemannian spaces can be obtained from pairs of length dilatation structures, the first being a tempered one and the second obtained via a coherent projection. Thus we get an intrinsic, synthetic, axiomatic description of sub-riemannian geometry, which transforms the classical construction of a Carnot-Caratheodory…
In the Engel group with its Carnot group structure we study subsets of locally finite subRiemannian perimeter and possessing constant subRiemannian normal. We prove the rectifiability of such sets: more precisely we show that, in some specific coordinates, they are upper-graphs of entire Lipschitz functions (with respect to the Euclidean distance). However we find that, when they are written as intrinsic upper-graphs with respect to the direction of the normal, then the function defining the set might even fail to be continuous. Nevertheless, we can prove that one can always find other horizon…