Equality in Borell-Brascamp-Lieb inequalities on curved spaces

By using optimal mass transportation and a quantitative H\"older inequality, we provide estimates for the Borell-Brascamp-Lieb deficit on complete Riemannian manifolds. Accordingly, equality cases in Borell-Brascamp-Lieb inequalities (including Brunn-Minkowski and Pr\'ekopa-Leindler inequalities) are characterized in terms of the optimal transport map between suitable marginal probability measures. These results provide several qualitative applications both in the flat and non-flat frameworks. In particular, by using Caffarelli's regularity result for the Monge-Amp\`ere equation, we {give a new proof} of Dubuc's characterization of the equality in Borell-Brascamp-Lieb inequalities in the Euclidean setting. When the $n$-dimensional Riemannian manifold has Ricci curvature ${\rm Ric}(M)\geq (n-1)k$ for some $k\in \mathbb R$, it turns out that equality in the Borell-Brascamp-Lieb inequality is expected only when a particular region of the manifold between the marginal supports has constant sectional curvature $k$. A precise characterization is provided for the equality in the Lott-Sturm-Villani-type distorted Brunn-Minkowski inequality on Riemannian manifolds. Related results for (not necessarily reversible) Finsler manifolds are also presented.Comment: 28 pages (with 1 figure); to appear in Advances in Mathematic

Weak contact equations for mappings into Heisenberg groups

Let k>n be positive integers. We consider mappings from a subset of k-dimensional Euclidean space R^k to the Heisenberg group H^n with a variety of metric properties, each of which imply that the mapping in question satisfies some weak form of the contact equation arising from the sub-Riemannian structure of the Heisenberg group. We illustrate a new geometric technique that shows directly how the weak contact equation greatly restricts the behavior of the mappings. In particular, we provide a new and elementary proof of the fact that the Heisenberg group H^n is purely k-unrectifiable. We also prove that for an open set U in R^k, the rank of the weak derivative of a weakly contact mapping in the Sobolev space W^{1,1}_{loc}(U;R^{2n+1}) is bounded by $n$ almost everywhere, answering a question of Magnani. Finally we prove that if a mapping from U to H^n is s-H\"older continuous, s>1/2, and locally Lipschitz when considered as a mapping into R^{2n+1}, then the mapping cannot be injective. This result is related to a conjecture of Gromov.Comment: 28 page

Geometric inequalities on Heisenberg groups

We establish geometric inequalities in the sub-Riemannian setting of the Heisenberg group $\mathbb H^n$. Our results include a natural sub-Riemannian version of the celebrated curvature-dimension condition of Lott-Villani and Sturm and also a geodesic version of the Borell-Brascamp-Lieb inequality akin to the one obtained by Cordero-Erausquin, McCann and Schmuckenschl\"ager. The latter statement implies sub-Riemannian versions of the geodesic Pr\'ekopa-Leindler and Brunn-Minkowski inequalities. The proofs are based on optimal mass transportation and Riemannian approximation of $\mathbb H^n$ developed by Ambrosio and Rigot. These results refute a general point of view, according to which no geometric inequalities can be derived by optimal mass transportation on singular spaces.Comment: to appear in Calculus of Variations and Partial Differential Equations (42 pages, 1 figure

Star formation activity of intermediate redshift cluster galaxies out to the infall regions

We present a spectroscopic analysis of two galaxy clusters out to ~4Mpc at z~0.2. The two clusters VMF73 and VMF74 identified by Vikhlinin et al. (1998) were observed with MOSCA at the Calar Alto 3.5m telescope. Both clusters lie in the ROSAT PSPC field R285 and were selected from the X-ray Dark Cluster Survey (Gilbank et al. 2004) that provides optical V- and I-band data. VMF73 and VMF74 are located at respective redshifts of z=0.25 and z=0.18 with velocity dispersions of 671 km/s and 442 km/s, respectively. The spectroscopic observations reach out to ~2.5 virial radii. Line strength measurements of the emission lines H_alpha and [OII]3727 are used to assess the star formation activity of cluster galaxies which show radial and density dependences. The mean and median of both line strength distributions as well as the fraction of star forming galaxies increase with increasing clustercentric distance and decreasing local galaxy density. Except for two galaxies with strong H_alpha and [OII] emission, all of the cluster galaxies are normal star forming or passive galaxies. Our results are consistent with other studies that show the truncation in star formation occurs far from the cluster centre.Comment: 15 pages, 12 figures. A&A in pres

Quasiconformal mappings that highly distort dimensions of many parallel lines

We construct a quasiconformal mapping of $n$-dimensional Euclidean space, $n \geq 2$, that simultaneously distorts the Hausdorff dimension of a nearly maximal collection of parallel lines by a given amount. This answers a question of Balogh, Monti, and Tyson.Comment: 12 page

Intrinsic curvature of curves and surfaces and a Gauss-Bonnet theorem in the Heisenberg group

We use a Riemannnian approximation scheme to define a notion of intrinsic Gaussian curvature for a Euclidean C2 -smooth surface in the Heisenberg group H away from characteristic points, and a notion of intrinsic signed geodesic curvature for Euclidean C2 -smooth curves on surfaces. These results are then used to prove a Heisenberg version of the Gauss–Bonnet theorem. An application to Steiner’s formula for the Carnot–Carathéodory distance in H is provided