Differentiability of integrable measurable cocycles between nilpotent groups

Abstract

We prove an analog for integrable measurable cocycles of Pansu’s differentiation theorem for Lipschitz maps between Carnot–Carathéodory spaces. This yields an alternative, ergodic theoretic proof of Pansu’s quasi-isometric rigidity theorem for nilpotent groups, answers a question of Tim Austin regarding integrable measure equivalence between nilpotent groups, and gives an independent proof and strengthening of Austin’s result that integrable measure equivalent nilpotent groups have bi-Lipschitz asymptotic cones. Our main tools are a nilpotent-valued cocycle ergodic theorem and a Poincaré recurrence lemma for nilpotent groups.