Zonal functions for the unitary groups and applications to Hermitian lattices. (Q1864848)

Euclidean lattices are frequently studied by means of theta series with spherical coefficients. In order to extend this method to lattices in \(n\)-dimensional complex or quaternionic unitary space, the authors first discuss the decomposition of the relevant harmonic polynomials (of 2\(n\) or 4\(n\) real variables, resp.) into irreducible summands under the unitary group. In the quaternionic case they describe an algorithm that gives specific bases for the corresponding spaces of zonal spherical functions (it is only in the real and complex case that these spaces have dimension one). Applications are made, up to \(n=24\), to lattices over the Eisenstein integers and over the Hurwitz integral quaternions. Some of these results had been obtained before by less elegant enumeration techniques.