A low rank property and nonexistence of higher dimensional horizontal   Sobolev sets
  We establish a "low rank property" for Sobolev mappings that pointwise solve a first order nonlinear system of PDEs, whose smooth solutions have the so-called "contact property". As a consequence, Sobolev mappings from an open set of the plane, taking values in the first Heisenberg group and that have almost everywhere maximal rank must have images with positive 3-dimensional Hausdorff measure with respect to the sub-Riemannian distance of the Heisenberg group. This provides a complete solution to a question raised in a paper by Z. M. Balogh, R. Hoefer-Isenegger and J. T. Tyson. Our approach differs from the previous ones. Its technical aspect consists in performing an "exterior differentiation by blow-up", where the standard distributional exterior differentiation is not possible. This method extends to higher dimensional Sobolev mappings taking values in higher dimensional Heisenberg groups. 
Valentino Magnani, Jan Mal\'y, Samuele Mongodi
math.AP math.DG