Filling inequalities for nilpotent groups

Abstract

We bound the higher-order Dehn functions and other filling invariants of certain Carnot groups using approximation techniques. These groups include the higher-dimensional Heisenberg groups, jet groups, and central products of two-step nilpotent groups. Some consequences of this work are a construction of groups with arbitrarily large nilpotency class that have euclidean n-dimensional filling volume functions, and a proof of part of a conjecture of Gromov on the higher-order filling functions of the higher-dimensional Heisenberg groups.