Compensated compactness for differential forms in Carnot groups and applications (Q2268611)

A Carnot group \(\mathbb G\) of step \(k\) is a simply connected Lie group whose Lie algebra \(\mathfrak{g}\) has dimension \(n\), and admits a step \(k\) stratification, i.e. there exist linear subspaces \(V_1,\dots,V_k\) such that \(\mathfrak{g}=V_1\oplus\dots\oplus V_k\), \([V_1,V_i]=V_{i+1}\), \(V_k\neq\{0\}\), \(V_i=\{0\}\) if \(i>k\), where \([V_1,V_i]\) is a subspace of \(\mathfrak{g}\) generated by the commutators \([X,Y]\) with \(X\in V_1\) and \(Y\in V_i\). The first layer of the stratification of the algebra \(\mathfrak{g}\) generates the horizontal subbundle \(H\). Carnot groups can be identified with the Euclidean space \(\mathbb R^n\) endowed with a non-commutative group law. In \(\mathbb R^n\), several questions in partial differential equations and the calculus of variations, e.g., non-periodic homogenization for second order elliptic equations or the semicontinuity of a variational functional in elasticity, can be reduced to the problem of convergence of the scalar product \(\langle E_k,D_k\rangle\) of two sequences \(E_k\) and \(D_k\) of vector fields weakly convergent in \(L^2(\mathbb R^n)\). The compensated compactness, or div-curl theorem states that \(\langle E_k,D_k\rangle\) still converges, provided \(\{\text{div}\, D_k\}\) and \(\{\text{curl}\, E_k\}\) are compact. In this paper, the authors study the non-periodic homogenization of differential operators in a Carnot group \(\mathbb G\) by considering a similar problem for horizontal vector fields in \(\mathbb G\). Each vector field \(E_k\) can be identified with a \(1\)-form \(\eta_k\) and each vector field \(D_k\) with the \(1\)-form \(\gamma_k\). Then, the compactness of \(\text{curl}\, E_k\) is equivalent to the compactness of \(d\eta_k\) and the compactness of \(\text{div}\, D_k\) is equivalent to the compactness of \(*d(*\gamma_k)\), where \(*\) is the Hodge duality operator. The authors prove the Hodge decomposition and compensated compactness theorems for these forms and apply them to prove a div-curl theorem for horizontal vector fields. They provide several different explicit examples to illustrate the \(H\)-convergence of divergence form second order differential operators in Carnot groups.