Vertical versus horizontal inequalities on simply connected nilpotent Lie groups and groups of polynomial growth

Abstract: We establish ``vertical versus horizontal inequalities'' for functions from nonabelian simply connected nilpotent Lie groups and not virtually abelian finitely generated groups of polynomial growth into uniformly convex Banach spaces using the vector-valued Littlewood--Paley--Stein theory approach of Lafforgue and Naor (2012). This is a quantitative nonembeddability statement that shows that any Lipschitz mapping from the aforementioned groups into a uniformly convex space must quantitatively collapse along certain subgroups. As a consequence, a ball of radius $r\ge 2$ in the aforementioned groups must incur bilipschitz distortion at least a constant multiple of $(\log r)^{1/q}$ into a $q(\ge 2)$-uniformly convex Banach space. This bound is sharp for the $L^p$ ($1<p<\infty$) spaces. In the special case of mappings of Carnot groups into the $L^p$ ($1<p<\infty$) spaces, we prove that the quantitative collapse occurs on a larger subgroup that is the commutator subgroup; this is in line with the qualitative Pansu--Semmes nonembeddability argument given by Cheeger and Kleiner (2006) and Lee and Naor (2006). We prove this by establishing a version of the classical Dorronsoro theorem on Carnot groups. Previously, in the setting of Heisenberg groups, F\"assler and Orponen (2019) established a one-sided Dorronsoro theorem with a restriction $0<\alpha<2$ on the range of exponents $\alpha$ of the Laplacian; this restriction does not appear in the commutative setting and is caused by their use of horizontal polynomials as approximants. We identify the correct class of approximant polynomials and prove the two-sided Dorronsoro theorem with the full range $0<\alpha<\infty$ of exponents in the general setting of Carnot groups, thus strengthening and extending the work of F\"assler and Orponen.