Quasiconformal mappings on the Heisenberg group (Q1059736): Difference between revisions

The Heisenberg group has a natural left-invariant metric space structure, and quasi-conformal (in the following: qc) maps with respect to this structure can be defined in the usual way. Such maps (in a slightly different but equivalent context) have been used by G. D. Mostow in his study of rigidity of locally symmetric spaces. They seem to be of interest also because the tangent space of the boundary of any smooth strongly pseudoconvex domain in \({\mathbb{C}}^ n\) can be identified in a natural way with the Heisenberg group. The present paper studies the basic properties of smooth qc maps on \(H_ 1\), the three-dimensional Heisenberg group. In the usual coordinatization by x,y,t, a basis of left-invariant vector fields is given by \(X=\partial /\partial x+2y(\partial /\partial t),\quad Y=\partial /\partial y-2x(\partial /\partial t),\quad T=\partial /\partial t.\) The dual basis is dx, dy, \(w=-2y dx+2x dy+dt.\) The form w determines a contact structure. It is shown that a smooth qc map f is a contact transformation, i.e. \(f*w=\lambda w\) with some scalar \(\lambda\). Let \(\lambda_ 1,\lambda_ 2\) denote the characteristic values of the restriction of the differential of f to the contact plane. It is shown that \(\lambda_ 1\lambda_ 2=| \lambda |\), furthermore, K-qc maps are characterized by the ratio of \(\lambda_ 1\) and \(\lambda_ 2\) being bounded by K. (The latter fact is not as obvious as its analogue in Riemannian geometry. In the present case it involves the second derivatives in an essential way.) It follows easily from known facts that smooth infinitesimal contact transformations (i.e. vector fields v that generate flows \(\{f_ s\}\) of contact transformations) are in one-to-one correspondence with functions p on \(H_ 1\), by the formula \(v=-1/4(Yp)X+1/4(Xp)Y+pT.\) It is shown that the inequality \(| (X-iY)^ 2p| \leq 4k\) implies that \(f_ s\) is K-qc with \(1/2(K+1/K)\leq \exp (\sqrt{2}k| s|).\) The next result is an analogue of the Beltrami equation which is necessary and sufficient for a map to be K-qc. The final result is an analogue of Liouville's theorem: It is proved that a smooth 1-qc diffeomorphism defined on an open subset of \(H_ 1\) must agree with the restriction of an element of the group SU(1,2), which has a natural action on the one-point compactification of \(H_ 1\).