Weak curvature conditions and functional inequalities

We give sufficient conditions for a measured length space (X,d,m) to admit local and global Poincare inequalities. We first introduce a condition DM on (X,d,m), defined in terms of transport of measures. We show that DM, along with a doubling condition on m, implies a scale-invariant local Poincare inequality. We show that if (X,d,m) has nonnegative N-Ricci curvature and has unique minimizing geodesics between almost all pairs of points then it satisfies DM, with constant 2^N. 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 prove a sharp global inequality.