Counter example to the Besicovitch covering property for some Carnot groups equipped with their Carnot-Carathéodory metric (Q706123)

A metric space \(M\) has the Besicovitch Covering Property (B. C. P.), if each family \(B\) of closed balls, whose centers form a bounded subset of \(M\), has a subfamily \(F\) covering the set of centers of the balls in \(B\), and such that each point of \(M\) is contained in at most \(N\) balls from \(F\). In the present paper this property is studied on Carnot Groups \(G\) carrying their Carnot-Caratheodory metric \(d\). These are simply connected nilpotent Lie groups, whose Lie algebra \(LG\) admits a decomposition \(LG=\oplus_{i=1}^k V_i\) with \([V_1,V_i]=V_{i+1}\), \(V_{k+1}=0\), where \(V_1, \cdots, V_k\) are linear subspaces of \(LG\). Let \(\hat{Z}\) be the subset of \(G\) corresponding to the sum \(\oplus_{i\geq 2} V_i\) under the exponential map. The main result of the paper is that \(G\) does not have the B. C. P., if there is \(x\in\hat{Z}\setminus\{0\}\) which can be joined to \(0\) by a minimal geodesic of class \(C^1\) and such that the distance function \(d(\cdot,0)\) from the origin is differentiable (in the sense of \textit{P. Pansu} [Ann. Math. (2) 129, No. 1, 1--60 (1989; Zbl 0678.53042)] on \(U\setminus\hat{Z}\) for some neighbourhood \(U\) of \(x\). Examples of Carnot groups satisfying these conditions are the groups of Heisenberg type, which therefore do not have the B. C. P..