Solvability of second-order PDOs on nilpotent groups -- a survey of recent results (Q1315479)

This is a well written survey of recent results on solvability of second order linear partial differential operators. The body of the paper is organized into five sections. After a short introduction, the second section gives a historical background and recalls some basic notation. Mentioned in this section are the classical result of Ehrenpreis and Malgrange on local solvability of constant coefficient operators and the classical counterexample of Lewy for the non-constant coefficient case. In the third and fourth sections the authors study second order linear operators on 2-step nilpotent groups. They state several sufficient conditions for local solvability. The authors observe that to prove local solvability of a left-invariant differential operator \(L\) it suffices to find a distribution \(K\) and a locally solvable left-invariant differential operator \(L_1\) such that \(L(K) = L_1 (\delta_0)\). They sketch the construction of \(K\) under various conditions. The tools used are the formulas for the one-parameter groups of unitary operators generated by twisted differential operators, and the spectral analysis of the sub-Laplacian on the Heisenberg group. In the last section of the paper the authors discuss doubly characteristic differential operators of second order.