Some properties of boundaries of symmetric spaces of rank one (Q5956148)

This paper uses Lie groups of Heisenberg type to study in a uniform way the boundary of rank 1 symmetric spaces of noncompact type, following earlier works of Cowling, Dooley, Koranyi and Ricci. This uniform approach avoids the classical case by case study. The boundary of such a symmetric space is a sphere, and the paper gives several results on metric properties of this sphere. Specifically, the author proves a conjecture of Koranyi on an explicit metric on the sphere, and shows that the classical Cayley transform extends to a 1-quasiconformal map on the sphere with respect to this metric. Besides reviewing the relevant background materials, the paper also gives a more direct proof of a result of Pansu on graded automorphisms of Heisenberg nilpotent algebras.