Some remarks on the definition of tangent cones in a Carnot-Carathéodory space (Q1580491)

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Some remarks on the definition of tangent cones in a Carnot-Carathéodory space
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    Some remarks on the definition of tangent cones in a Carnot-Carathéodory space (English)
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    28 October 2001
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    A Carnot-Carathéodory space is a metric space whose underlying space is a Riemannian manifold \(M\) with a chosen subbundle \(T^1\) of the tangent bundle \(TM\). The C.C.-distance between two points \(x,y\) is defined to be the infimum over the lengths of piecewise smooth paths joining \(x\) and \(y\) and tangent to \(T^1\) almost everywhere. The main result of the paper is an intrinsic definition of the tangent cone (as defined for general metric spaces, in the sense of Gromov) at a point \(x\) of a Carnot-Carathéodory space. This is given in terms of equivalence classes of certain paths. Moreover, an intrinsic definition of the structure of a unipotent Lie group is given on the tangent cone. The tangent cone and the Lie group structure do not depend on the underlying Riemannian metric used to define the C.C. metric. The development is based on a grading on the tangent space of the underlying manifold induced by iterated Poisson brackets of elements of \(T^1\). The required preliminaries are developed in the paper.
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    Carnot-Carathéodory space
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    tangent cone
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