The large scale geometry in nilpotent Lie groups (Q1599919)

In 1964 \textit{J. A. Wolf} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 15, 271-274 (1964; Zbl 0134.17905)] proved that every point of a nilpotent Lie group \(G\) with a left invariant Riemannian metric \(g\) has three two-dimensional sections \(\sigma_1, \sigma_2\) and \(\sigma_3\) such that the sectional curvatures satisfy \(K_{\sigma_1}(g)= 0\), \(K_{\sigma_2} (g)<0\) and \(K_{\sigma_3}(g)>0\). Hence, \(G\) cannot be locally isometric to a non-negatively curved or to a non-positively curved Riemannian space. The author generalizes the foregoing result as follows. A mapping \(f\) between metric spaces \((M_1,\rho_1)\) and \((M_2, \rho_2)\) is called an \((L,C)\)-quasi-isometry if, for every \(x,y\in M\), the following inequality holds: \(L^{-1}\rho_1 (x,y)-C\leq \rho_2(f(x), f(y))\leq L \rho_1 (x,y) +C\); the metric space \((M_2,\rho_2)\) is assumed to be complete. The author's main result (Theorems A,B) states that there is no quasi-isometric embedding of a connected non-abelian nilpotent Lie group with a left invariant Riemannian metric into a complete simply connected Aleksandrov space of curvature \(\leq 0\) \(\text{(CBA}_0)\) or a complete Aleksandrov space of curvature \(\geq 0\) \(\text{(CBB}_0)\). It should be noted that while negatively curved and positively curved Aleksandrov spaces generalize Riemannian spaces, they can have singularities of quite general nature. The non-embeddability result follows from a theorem by \textit{P. Pansu} [Ann. Math. (2) 129, 1-60 (1989; Zbl 0678.53042)] and the author's intermediate Theorem C. If \(G\) is a connected simply connected graded non-abelian nilpotent Lie group with a left invariant Carnot-Carathéodory metric, then \(G\) does not admit a local bi-Lipschitz embedding into \(\text{CBA}_0\) or into \(\text{CBB}_0\). The proof of Theorem C uses a generalization of the familiar Rademacher theorem, curvature estimates of the tangent cones to \(\text{BBA}_K\) [\textit{I. G. Nikolaev}, Sib. Mat. Zh. 19, 1341-1348 (1978; Zbl 0405.53044), Manuscr. Math. 86, No. 2, 137-147 (1995; Zbl 0822.53043)] and its non-negative curvature counterpart [\textit{Yu. Burago}, \textit{M. Gromov} and \textit{G. Perel'man}, Usp. Mat. Nauk 47, No. 2 (284), 3-51 (1992; Zbl 0802.53018)].