Bourgain-Brezis-Mironescu approach in metric spaces with Euclidean tangents (Q2117473)

Assume \(f\) is a Sobolev function in \( W^{1,p}(\Omega)\) for \(p\in (1,\infty)\) on a smooth bounded domain \(\Omega\subset \mathbb{R}^n\). Bourgain, Brezis, and Mironescu [\textit{J. Bourgain} et al., in: Optimal control and partial differential equations. In honour of Professor Alain Bensoussan's 60th birthday. Proceedings of the conference, Paris, France, December~4, 2000. Amsterdam: IOS Press; Tokyo: Ohmsha. 439--455 (2001; Zbl 1103.46310)] have proved that there exists a constant \(K_{p,n}\) such that \[ \lim_{n\to \infty} \int_\Omega\int_\Omega \frac{|f(x)-f(y)|^p}{|x-y|^p}\rho_n(x-y)\, dx\, dy=K_{p,n}\|\nabla f\|^p_{L^p(\Omega)} \] for a sequence of nonnegative radial mollifiers \(\rho_n\) satisfying \(\int_{\mathbb{R}^n} \rho_n \, dx=1\) and for all \(\delta>0\), \(\lim_{n\to \infty} \int_\delta^\infty \rho_n(r)r^{n-1}\, dr=0\). The paper under review generalizes the above result to a complete, separable, doubling metric measure space \((X,d,\mu)\) supporting a \((1,p)\)-Poincaré inequality. The metric measure space \(X\) is also assumed to possess Euclidean tangents of dimension \(n\) for \(\mu\)-a.e. \(x\in X\). The main result states that there exists a constant \(C_{p,n}\) such that if \(f\in W^{1,p}(X,d,\mu)\) and \(p\in(1,\infty)\), then \[ \lim_{r\to 0}\frac{1}{r^p}\int_X\fint_{B(x,r)} |f(x)-f(y)|^p \, d\mu(y) \, d\mu(x)=C_{p,n}\mathrm{Ch}_p(f), \] where \(\mathrm{Ch}_p(f)\) denotes the Cheeger energy of \(f\). The main result is extended to the aforementioned metric measure spaces \((X,d,\mu)\) with the Heisenberg group \(\mathbb{H}^1\) as a tangent as well. The author shows the relation between \(K_{p,n}\) and \(C_{p,n}\) and gives an example that the main result fails when the tangent space is not fixed.