Besicovitch covering property for homogeneous distances on the Heisenberg groups (Q2628342)

Let \((M, d)\) be a metric space. The property \((BCP)\) (Besicovitch covering property) is said to hold for the metric \(d\) on \(M\) if there is a positive integer \(N\) with the property: Let \(A\) be a bounded subset of \((M, d)\) and \(\mathcal{B}\) be a family of closed balls in \((M, d)\) such that each point of \(A\) is the center of some ball in \(\mathcal{B}\); then there is a sub-family \(\mathcal{F} \subset \mathcal{B}\) whose balls cover \(A\) and each \(m \in M\) belongs to at most \(N\) balls of \(\mathcal{F} \). In \((M, d)\), a finite family \(\mathcal{B}\) of closed balls, with non-void intersection, is said to be a family of Besicovitch balls if for any two distinct balls \(B_{1}, B_{2}\) in the family with centers \(x_{1}, x_{2}\) one has \(x_{1} \notin B_{2}\). The Heisenberg group \(H^{n}\) is identified with \(\mathbb{R}^{2n+1}\) with Euclidean topology and with the group law: \((x, y, z).(x', y', z')= (x+x', y+y', z+z'+ \frac{1}{2} \langle x, y'\rangle -\frac{1}{2} \langle y, x'\rangle)\) (\(x, x', y, y' \in \mathbb{R}^{n}\), \(z, z' \in \mathbb{R}\)). The one-parameter family of dilation on \(H^{n}\) is \((\delta_{\lambda})_{\lambda 0}, \; \delta_{\lambda}(x, y, z)=(\lambda x, \lambda y, \lambda^{2} z)\). A distance \(d\) in \(H^{n}\) is said to be homogeneous if it is left invariant and \(1\)-homogeneous with respect to the dilation. For an \(\alpha 0\) and \(p, q \in H^{n}\), set \(d_{\alpha}(p, q)= \inf \{ r0: \delta_{\frac{1}{r}}(p^{-1}q) \in B_{\alpha} \}\), where \(B_{\alpha} \) is the Euclidean ball in \(H^{n} \simeq \mathbb{R}^{2n+1}\); if \(\alpha \) is small enough then \(d_{\alpha}\) actually defines a homogeneous distance on \(H^{n}\). The main result of the paper is: Let \(\alpha0 \) be such that \(d_{\alpha}\) defines a homegeneous distance on \(H^{n}\). Then BCP property holds for the distance \(d_{\alpha}\). Two geometric criteria are given which imply the non-validity of BCP. Some further examples and counter examples are given.