Laplace-Beltrami differentiability of positive definite kernels on the sphere (Q1942651)

The authors study sufficiently smooth kernels \(K:S^{n-1}\times S^{n-1}\to\mathbb C\) on the spheres \( S^{n-1}\) as well as their Laplace-Beltrami derivatives with respect to both arguments. It is, in particular, shown that this procedure preserves positive definiteness. Moreover, some results for expansions for kernels and their Laplace-Beltrami derivatives are derived with respect to orthonormal bases on \(L^2( S^{n-1})\) and, in particular, with respect to spherical harmonics. The reviewer has the impression that the main results could be embedded in a general theory for kernels and Laplace-Beltrami operators on (compact) symmetric spaces.