Almost uniform domains and Poincar\'e inequalities

Here we show existence of numerous subsets of Euclidean and metric spaces that, despite having empty interior, still support Poincar\'e inequalities. Most importantly, our methods do not depend on any rectilinear or self-similar structure of the underlying space. We instead employ the notion of uniform domain of Martio and Sarvas. Our condition relies on the measure density of such subsets, as well as the regularity and relative separation of their boundary components. In doing so, our results hold true for metric spaces equipped with doubling measures and Poincar\'e inequalities in general, and for the Heisenberg groups in particular. To our knowledge, these are the first examples of such subsets on any step-2 Carnot group. Such subsets also give, in general, new examples of Sobolev extension domains on doubling metric measure spaces. When specialized to the plane, we give general sufficient conditions for planar subsets, possibly with empty interior, to be Ahlfors 2-regular and to satisfy a (1,2)-Poincar\'e inequality. In the Euclidean case, our construction also covers the non-self-similar Sierpi\'nski carpets of Mackay, Tyson, and Wildrick, as well as higher dimensional analogues not treated in the literature. The analysis of the Poincar\'e inequality with exponent p=1, for these carpets and their higher dimensional analogues, includes a new way of proving an isoperimetric inequality on a space without constructing Semmes families of curves.