An alternative construction of the Rumin complex on homogeneous nilpotent Lie groups (Q6175961)

Let \(G\) be a connected and simply connected nilpotent Lie group with dilations. We suppose that \(G\) is a Carnot group. The Rumin complex, which computes the de Rham cohomology of \(G\), is given as follows. Let \(\Omega^kG\) be the space of smooth \(k\)-forms on \(G\) and \(\Omega_L^kG\) the subspace of left-invariant \(k\)-forms. \(d\) denotes the exterior derivative on \(\Omega^kG\) and \(d_0\) the restriction of \(d\) to \(\Omega_L^kG\), that is the Chevalley-Eilenberg differential on \(\mathrm{Hom}(\land^k\mathfrak{g},\mathbb R)\cong\Omega_L^kG\). Let \(d_0^t\) be the transpose of \(d_0\) and \(d_0^{-1}\) the partial inverse given by \((d_0^{-1})\mathrm{pr}_{\mathrm{Im}\ \!d_0}\). \(\Pi_0=I-d_0^{-1}d_0-d_0d_0^{-1}\) is the orthogonal projection onto \(E_0\subset \mathrm{Hom}(\land^k\mathfrak{g},\mathbb R)\), which is also given by the spectral decomposition of \(\Box_0=d_0d_0^t+d_0^td_0=\sum_{\lambda\in\mathrm{Sp}(\Box_0)}\lambda\Pi_\lambda\). Then \[ \Pi_0=\frac{1}{2\pi i}\int_{|z|=\epsilon}(z-\Box_0)^{-1}dz \] and \(E_0=\mathrm{ker}\Box_0\). Let \(b=d_0^{-1}d_0-d_0^{-1}d\) and \(\Pi=(I-b)^{-1}d_0^{-1}d+d(I-b)^{-1}d_0^{-1}\) be differential operators on \(\Omega^\bullet G\). \(\Pi\) is a projection onto \(\mathrm{Im}\Pi=F\) along \(\mathrm{ker}\Pi=E\). Then the de Rham complex \((\Omega^\bullet, d)\) splits into \((E^\bullet, d)\) and \((F^\bullet, d)\) and, by letting \(d_c=\Pi_0d(I-\Pi)\Pi_0\), the Rumin complex is given by \((E_0^\bullet, d_c)\). In this paper an alternative construction of the Rumin complex, which does not rely on \(d_0^{-1}\), is given. The projection \(P\) is defined by replacing \(\Box_0\) with \(\Box=dd_0^t+d_0^td\). Let \(L=P\Pi_0+(I-P)(I-\Pi_0)\). Then \(\Pi_0=L^{-1}PL\). We decompose \(L^{-1}dL\) as \(L^{-1}dL=L^{-1}dL\Pi_0+L^{-1}dL(I-\Pi_0)=D+C\). The authors prove that \(I-\Pi=P\) and \(d_c=D\). They also carry out the explicit constructions of \(d, d_0, \Box_0, \Box, P, L, D, C\) in the case of the Engel groups \(G_t, t>0\).