Harmonic analysis for differential forms on complex hyperbolic spaces (Q1962804)

The paper under review is devoted to harmonic analysis on the bundle of differential forms over the \(n\)-dimensional complex hyperbolic space \(G/K=SU(n,1)/S(U(n)\times U(1))=H^n({\mathbb C})\), which constitutes one of the three classical families of Riemannian symmetric spaces of noncompact type and of rank 1. The author uses representation theory for the semisimple Lie group \(SU(n,1)\) to develop the Fourier transform theory (inversion and Plancherel formulas from both the algebraic and the analytic points of view) as well as related geometric aspects (\(L^2\) spectrum of the Hodge-de Rham Laplacian and the behavior of the heat kernel at the origin). By particularizing Harish-Chandra's Plancherel theorem, a decomposition of the space \(L^2(G,K,\tau_r)\) into \(G\)-irreducible components is given, where \(L^2(G,K,\tau_r)\) is the space of square-integrable functions of type \(\tau_r\) on \(G=SU(n,1)\) and \(\tau_r\) means the \(r\)-th exterior product of the complexified coadjoint representation of \(K=S(U(n)\times U(1))\) of the dual of the tangent space of \(G/K\) at the origin. From the analytic point of view, a spherical Fourier transform based on the study of spherical functions is developed and the inversion formula for this transform is proved. In addition, the Plancherel measures are explicitly computed and the decay at infinity of the heat kernel \(H-t(e)\) is estimated.