Pekka Koskela

Analysis on metric spaces emerged in the 1990s as an independent research field providing a unified treatment of first-order analysis in diverse and potentially nonsmooth settings. Based on the fundamental concept of upper gradient, the notion of a Sobolev function was formulated in the setting of metric measure spaces supporting a Poincaré inequality. This coherent treatment from first principles is an ideal introduction to the subject for graduate students and a useful reference for experts. It presents the foundations of the theory of such first-order Sobolev spaces, then explores geometric implications of the critical Poincaré inequality, and indicates numerous examples of spaces satisfying this axiom. A distinguishing feature of the book is its focus on vector-valued Sobolev spaces. The final chapters include proofs of several landmark theorems, including Cheeger's stability theorem for Poincaré inequalities under Gromov–Hausdorff convergence, and the Keith–Zhong self-improvement theorem for Poincaré inequalities.

In this book we introduce the class of mappings of finite distortion as a generalization of the class of mappings of bounded distortion. Connections with models of nonlinear elasticity are also discussed. We study continuity properties, behavior of our mappings on null sets, topological properties like openness and discreteness, regularity of the potential inverse mappings and many other aspects.