Sub-Finsler horofunction boundaries of the Heisenberg group

Abstract

We give a complete analytic and geometric description of the horofunction boundary for polygonal sub-Finsler metrics---that is, those that arise as asymptotic cones of word metrics---on the Heisenberg group. We develop theory for the more general case of horofunction boundaries in homogeneous groups by connecting horofunctions to Pansu derivatives of the distance function.