Horizontal inverse mean curvature flow in the Heisenberg group

TL;DR

This paper develops a sub-Riemannian weak solution theory for inverse mean curvature flows in the Heisenberg group, solving an open problem and deriving geometric inequalities using a novel perimeter-preserving flow.

Contribution

It introduces a sub-Riemannian weak solution framework for IMCF in the Heisenberg group and proves the Heintze-Karcher inequality in this setting.

Findings

Established a sub-Riemannian weak solution theory for IMCF in 

Proved the Heintze-Karcher inequality in 

Derived a Minkowski-type formula using a perimeter-preserving flow

Abstract

Huisken and Ilmanen in [37] created the theory of weak solutions for inverse mean curvature flows (IMCF) of hypersurfaces on Riemannian manifolds, and proved successfully a Riemannian version of the Penrose inequality. The present paper investigates and constructs a sub-Riemannian version of the theory of weak solutions for inverse mean curvature flows of hypersurfaces in the first Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}^{1}$, and provides a positive answer to an open problem: the Heintze-Karcher inequality in $\mathbb{H}^{1}$. Furthermore, we introduce a $\mathbb{H}$-perimeter preserving flow (1.8) in the first Heisenberg group $\mathbb{H}^{1}$, which is derived by applying the Heisenberg dilation to HIMCF. This rescaled flow is subsequently applied to establish a Minkowski-type formula in $\mathbb{H}^{1}$.