Contraction properties and differentiability of p-energy forms with applications to nonlinear potential theory on self-similar sets

We introduce new contraction properties called the generalized p-contraction property for p-energy forms as generalizations of many well-known inequalities, such as Clarkson's inequalities, the strong subadditivity and the ``Markov property'' in the theory of nonlinear Dirichlet forms, and show that any p-energy form satisfying Clarkson's inequalities is Fr\'{e}chet differentiable. We also verify the generalized p-contraction property for p-energy forms constructed by Kigami [Mem. Eur. Math. Soc. 5 (2023)] and by Cao--Gu--Qiu [Adv. Math. 405 (2022), no. 108517]. As a general framework of p-energy forms taking into consideration the generalized p-contraction property, we introduce the notion of p-resistance form and investigate fundamental properties for p-harmonic functions with respect to p-resistance forms. In particular, some new estimates on scaling factors of p-energy forms are obtained by establishing H\"{o}lder regularity estimates for harmonic functions, and the p-walk dimensions of the generalized Sierpi\'{n}ski carpets and D-dimensional level-l Sierpi\'{n}ski gasket are shown to be strictly greater than p.