Fragment-wise differentiable structures

Abstract: The $p$-modulus of curves, test plans, upper gradients, charts, differentials, approximations in energy and density of directions are all concepts associated to the theory of Sobolev functions in metric measure spaces. The purpose of this paper is to give an analogous geometric and ``fragment-wise'' theory for Lipschitz functions and Weaver derivations, where $\infty$-modulus of curve fragments, $\ast$-upper gradients and Alberti representations play a central role. We give a new definition of fragment-wise charts and prove that they exists for spaces with finite Hausdorff dimension. We give a replacement for $p$-duality in terms of Alberti representations and $\infty$-modulus and present the theory of $\ast$-upper gradients. Further, we give new and sharper results for approximations of Lipschitz functions, which yields the density of directions. Our results are applicable to all complete and separable metric measure spaces. In the process, we show that there are strong parallels between the Sobolev and Lipschitz worlds.