The Sard problem in step 2 and in filiform Carnot groups

We study the Sard problem for the endpoint map in some well-known classes of Carnot groups. Our first main result deals with step 2 Carnot groups, where we provide lower bounds (depending only on the algebra of the group) on the codimension of the abnormal set; it turns out that our bound is always at least 3, which improves the result proved in Le Donne et al. [Ann. Inst. H. Poincare Anal. Non Lineaire 33 (2016) 1639-1666] and settles a question emerged in Ottazzi and Vittone [ESAIM: COCV 25 (2019) 18]. In our second main result we characterize the abnormal set in filiform groups and show that it is either a horizontal line, or a 3-dimensional algebraic variety.