The asymptotic expansion of Minakshisundaram-Pleijel in the equivariant case (Q1070631)

In this paper the authors start an investigation of the Minakshisundaram- Pleijel expansion on a Riemannian manifold M where a compact group G of isometries acts, probably with singular orbits. Assume \(\rho\) to be a finite dimensional irreducible representation of G in a complex vector space V. Since G acts also on each complexified eigenspace \(E_{\lambda}\) of the Laplacian of M (nonnegative eigenvalues) the function \[ L_{\rho}(t)=\sum_{\lambda \geq 0}e^{-\lambda t}\dim_{G}(V,E_{\lambda}),\quad t>0 \] is defined. The main result is the expansion \[ (*)\quad L_{\rho}(t)\sim (4\pi t)^{-m/2}\cdot \sum_{j\geq 0,\quad 0\leq k\leq K(M,G)-1}a_{jk}\cdot t^{j/2}\cdot \log^ kt, \] where \(m=\dim (M/G)\) and K(M,G) is a constant which is in terms of the number of different dimensions of orbits of G in M. The proof is based on a weakened form of resolution of the ''fixed point set'' \(\{\) (p,g)\(\in M\times G|\) \(g(p)=p\}\). The second part of the paper is a first step towards understanding when logarithmic terms in (*) may occur. It is proved that there are none on \(S^ n\), \(CP^ n\), \(HP^ n\), and this is conjectured to be so on all compact symmetric spaces.