Frequency of Sobolev dimension distortion of horizontal subgroups of Heisenberg groups

We study the behavior of Sobolev mappings defined on the Heisenberg groups with respect to a foliation by left cosets of a horizontal homogeneous subgroup. We quantitatively estimate, in terms of Euclidean Hausdorff dimension, the size of the set of cosets that are mapped onto sets of high dimension. The proof of our main result combines ideas of Gehring and Mostow about the absolute continuity of quasiconformal mappings with Mattila's projection and slicing machinery.