Currents in Heisenberg groups

Abstract

There are three approaches to currents tuned to the anisotropic geometry of Heisenberg groups: Ambrosio and Kirchheim's approach valid for general metric spaces; distributions dual to horizontal differential forms; distributions dual to Rumin's complex. It is shown that, in dimensions less than half the ambient dimension, these three theories coincide. On the other hand, they diverge beyond middle dimension: Ambrosio-Kirchheim currents vanish, Rumin currents correspond to a new class of Federer-Fleming currents called oblique currents.