Universal differentiability sets in Carnot groups of arbitrarily high step (Q2218723)

According to Rademacher's theorem, every Lipschitz map \(f:\mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}^m\) is almost everywhere differentiable. The converse of this result is true if and only if \(n \leq m\): For any Lebesgue-null set \(N \subset \mathbb{R}^n\), there is a Lipschitz map \(f:\mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}^m\) which is not differentiable at any \(x \in N\). The failure of the converse for real valued mappings on \(\mathbb{R}^n\) with \(n > 1\) may be realized as follows: There is a compact set \(D \subset \mathbb{R}^n\) of Hausdorff dimension 1 such that any Lipschitz map \(f:\mathbb{R}^n \to \mathbb{R}\) is differentiable at some point \(x \in D\). We refer to such a set as a universal differentiability set Universal differentiability sets for real valued functions have been constructed in the sub-Riemannian Heisenberg groups [the authors, Math. Ann. 368, No. 1--2, 233--278 (2017; Zbl 1375.26024)] and in arbitrary step two Carnot groups [\textit{E. Le Donne} et al., J. Math. Pures Appl. (9) 121, 83--112 (2019; Zbl 1412.53054)]. In the paper under review, universal differentiability sets are constructed in arbitrary Carnot groups \(\mathbb{G}\) which satisfy a certain geometric assumption (see Assumptions 6.1). The model filiform groups are examples of Carnot groups which satisfy this condition. An essential tool in the proof is the fact that the existence of an ``almost maximal'' directional derivative of \(f: \mathbb{G} \to \mathbb{R}\) at \(x \in \mathbb{G}\) implies the Pansu differentiability of \(f\) at \(x\) (see Theorem~6.6). The proof of this theorem relies heavily on the geometric assumption on \(\mathbb{G}\). In fact, the authors show that it fails in the free Carnot group of rank two and step three.