Weak curvature conditions and functional inequalities

We give sufficient conditions for a measured length space (X,d,ν) to admit local and global Poincaré inequalities, along with a Sobolev inequality. We first introduce a condition DM on (X,d,ν), defined in terms of transport of measures. We show that DM, together with a doubling condition on ν, implies a scale-invariant local Poincaré inequality. We show that if (X,d,ν) has nonnegative N-Ricci curvature and has unique minimizing geodesics between almost all pairs of points then it satisfies DM, with constant N². The condition DM is preserved by measured Gromov-Hausdorff limits. We then prove a Sobolev inequality for measured length spaces with N-Ricci curvature bounded below by K>0. Finally we derive a sharp global Poincaré inequality.