Construction of Sobolev spaces of fractional order with sub-riemannian vector fields
Given a smooth family of vector fields satisfying Chow-Hörmander’s condition of step 2 and a regularity assumption, we prove that the Sobolev spaces of fractional order constructed by the standard functional analysis can actually be “computed” with a simple formula involving the sub-riemannian distance.Our approach relies on a microlocal analysis of translation operators in an anisotropic context. It also involves classical estimates of the heat-kernel associated to the sub-elliptic Laplacian.