$L^p$-Hodge decomposition and global integral estimates on the Cartan group

Abstract

The study of Sobolev and Poincar\'e inequalities for differential forms in Carnot groups and in the more general sub-Riemannian setting is still an open problem in its full generality. One may conjecture that, for general Carnot groups, these inequalities are expressed in terms of suitable graded Lebesgue norms. In recent years, many results have been obtained, both in the Euclidean setting and in the Heisenberg groups, as well as for contact manifolds with bounded geometry. There are also some results for general Carnot groups; however, these do not cover the problem in its full generality. In this paper, we consider a particular Carnot group, the so-called Cartan group (a free Carnot group, of step $3$ with $2$ generators), which provides a natural testing ground for these questions, since its step-three structure already exhibits several phenomena that do not occur in the Heisenberg groups. In this setting, we are able to prove global Poincar\'e and Sobolev-Gaffney inequalities for differential forms. With the aim of obtaining sharp estimates, we replace the de Rham complex of differential forms with the Rumin complex. The case $p>1$ is carried out after establishing an $L^p$-Hodge decomposition with homogeneous Sobolev classes. We are able to consider also the endpoint case $p=1$; however, as in Euclidean setting, when $p=1$, the operator we deal with provides only weak-type estimates which do not yield a Hodge decomposition analogous to the case $p>1$. Therefore, in this situation the proof follows a different approach, relying on a recent result proved in \cite{BT}.