Homotopy groups of spheres and Lipschitz homotopy groups of Heisenberg groups (Q2453450)

Serre's finiteness result says that \(\pi_k(S^n)\otimes \mathbb Q\neq 0\) if and only if \(n=k\) or \(n\) is even and \(k=2n-1\). There are similarities between the Lipschitz homotopy groups of the Heisenberg group \(\mathbb H_n\) and the homotopy groups of the sphere \(\mathbb S^n\). The Lipschitz homotopy groups \(\pi_m^{\text{Lip}}(\mathbb H_n)\) are zero for the case \(1\leq m<n\) and the case \(n=1\) and \(m\geq 2\), and are not zero for the case \(m=n\). The authors introduce the notion \textit{rank-essential} such that if \(\pi_m(\mathbb S^n)\) is rank-essential, then \(\pi_m(\mathbb S^n)\neq 0\), and show that if \(\pi_m(\mathbb S^n)\) is rank-essential, then \(\pi_m^{\text{Lip}}(\mathbb H_n)\neq 0\). This also gives a corollary saying that \(\pi_m(\mathbb S^n)\) is not rank-essential for \(n+2\leq m<2n-1\), which is already known for \(n+1\leq m<2n-1\). The main result of this paper is that the homotopy groups \(\pi_n(\mathbb S^n)\) and \(\pi_{4n-1}(\mathbb S^{2n})\) are rank-essential for \(n\geq 1\). This implies that none of the Lipschitz homotopy groups \(\pi_n^{\text{Lip}}(\mathbb H_n)\) and \(\pi_{4n-1}^{\text{Lip}}(\mathbb H_{2n})\) is zero. Corresponding to \(\pi_n^{\text{Lip}}(\mathbb H_n)\neq 0\), \textit{N. DeJarnette, P. Hajłasz, A. Lukyanenko} and \textit{J. T. Tyson} [Conform. Geom. Dyn. 18, 119--156 (2014; Zbl 1316.46034)] showed that for a compact Riemannian manifold \(\mathcal M\) with or without boundary, if dim \(\mathcal M\geq n+1\) and \(n\leq p<n+1\), then the Lipschitz mappings Lip\((\mathcal M,\mathbb H_n)\) are not dense in the Sobolev space of mappings \(W^{1,p}(\mathcal M,\mathbb H_n)\). Corresponding to \(\pi_{4n-1}^{\text{Lip}}(\mathbb H_{2n})\neq 0\), the authors here show that if \(\mathcal M\) is a compact Riemannian manifold with or without boundary of dimension dim \(\mathcal M\geq 4n\), then the Lipschitz mappings Lip\((\mathcal M,\mathbb H_{2n})\) are not dense in \(W^{1,p}(\mathcal M,\mathbb H_{2n})\) when \(4n-1 \leq p < 4n\).