Type: Article
Publication Date: 2023-07-05
Citations: 5
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00039-023-00647-6
Abstract Henstock and Macbeath asked in 1953 whether the Brunn–Minkowski inequality can be generalized to nonabelian locally compact groups; questions along the same line were also asked by Hrushovski, McCrudden, and Tao. We obtain here such an inequality and prove that it is sharp for helix-free locally compact groups, which includes real linear algebraic groups, Nash groups, semisimple Lie groups with finite center, solvable Lie groups, etc. The proof follows an induction on dimension strategy; new ingredients include an understanding of the role played by maximal compact subgroups of Lie groups, a necessary modified form of the inequality which is also applicable to nonunimodular locally compact groups, and a proportionated averaging trick.