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.
We study left-invariant distances on Lie groups for which there exists a one-parameter family of homothetic automorphisms. The main examples are Carnot groups, in particular the Heisenberg group with the standard dilations. We are interested in crite
ria implying that, locally and away from the diagonal, the distance is Euclidean Lipschitz and, consequently, that the metric spheres are boundaries of Lipschitz domains in the Euclidean sense. In the first part of the paper, we consider geodesic distances. In this case, we actually prove the regularity of the distance in the more general context of sub-Finsler manifolds with no abnormal geodesics. Secondly, for general groups we identify an algebraic criterium in terms of the dilating automorphisms, which for example makes us conclude the regularity of homogeneous distances on the Heisenberg group.In such a group, we analyze in more details the geometry of metric spheres. We also provide examples of homogeneous groups where spheres presents cusps.
We give a construction of direct limits in the category of complete metric scalable groups and provide sufficient conditions for the limit to be an infinite-dimensional Carnot group. We also prove a Rademacher-type theorem for such limits.
In the setting of Carnot groups, we are concerned with the rectifiability problem for subsets that have finite sub-Riemannian perimeter. We introduce a new notion of rectifiability that is possibly, weaker than the one introduced by Franchi, Serapion
i, and Serra Cassano. Namely, we consider subsets $Gamma$ that, similarly to intrinsic Lipschitz graphs, have a cone property: there exists an open dilation-invariant subset $C$ whose translations by elements in $Gamma$ dont intersect $Gamma$. However, a priori the cone $C$ may not have any horizontal directions in its interior. In every Carnot group, we prove that the reduced boundary of every finite-perimeter subset can be covered by countably many subsets that have such a cone property. The cones are related to the semigroups generated by the horizontal half-spaces determined by the normal directions. We further study the case when one can find horizontal directions in the interior of the cones, in which case we infer that finite-perimeter subsets are countably rectifiable with respect to intrinsic Lipschitz graphs. A sufficient condition for this to hold is the existence of a horizontal one-parameter subgroup that is not an abnormal curve. As an application, we verify that this property holds in every filiform group, of either first or second type.
We consider sets of locally finite perimeter in Carnot groups. We show that if E is a set of locally finite perimeter in a Carnot group G, then for almost every x in G with respect to the perimeter measure of E, some tangent of E at x is a vertical h
alfspace. This is a partial extension of a theorem of Franchi-Serapioni-Serra Cassano in step 2 Carnot groups: they have shown that, for almost every x, E has a unique tangent at x, and this tangent is a vertical halfspace.
In this paper we prove the one-dimensional Preiss theorem in the first Heisenberg group $mathbb H^1$. More precisely we show that a Radon measure $phi$ on $mathbb H^1$ with positive and finite one-density with respect to the Koranyi distance is suppo
rted on a one-rectifiable set in the sense of Federer, i.e., it is supported on the countable union of the images of Lipschitz maps $Asubseteq mathbb Rtomathbb H^1$. The previous theorem is a consequence of a Marstrand-Mattila type rectifiability criterion, which we prove in arbitrary Carnot groups for measures with tangent planes that admit a normal complementary subgroup. Namely, in this co-normal case, even if we a priori ask that the tangent planes at a point might rotate at different scales, a posteriori the measure has a unique tangent almost everywhere. Since every horizontal subgroup has a normal complement, our criterion applies in the particular case of one-dimensional horizontal subgroups. These results are the outcome of a detailed study of a new notion of rectifiability: we say that a Radon measure on a Carnot group is $mathscr{P}_h$-rectifiable, for $hinmathbb N$, if it has positive $h$-lower density and finite $h$-upper density almost everywhere, and, at almost every point, it admits as tangent measures only (multiple of) the Haar measure of a homogeneous subgroup of Hausdorff dimension $h$. We also prove several structure properties of $mathscr{P}_h$-rectifiable measures. First, we compare $mathscr{P}_h$-rectifiability with other notions of rectifiability previously known in the literature in the setting of Carnot groups and we realize that it is strictly weaker than them. Furthermore, we show that a $mathscr{P}_h$-rectifiable measure has almost everywhere positive and finite $h$-density whenever the tangents admit at least one complementary subgroup.