Unitary representations of the universal cover of \(\mathrm{SU}(1,1)\) and tensor products (Q2017070)

Let \(G\) denote the universal covering group of \(\mathrm{SU}(1,1)\). It is known that there are four series of irreducible unitary representations of \(G\): (a) principal series representations \(\pi_{\varepsilon,it}\), \(0<\varepsilon\leqslant 1\), \(t\in \mathbb R\); (b) complementary series representations \(\pi^c_{\sigma, \tau}\), \(0<\sigma<1\), \(0<\tau<1\); and two ``discrete'' series (continuation of discrete series) (c) highest weight representations \(\pi^+_{\lambda}\), \(\lambda>0\); (d) lowest weight representations \(\pi^-_{\lambda}\), \(\lambda>0\); and also the trivial one. In this paper the authors consider tensor products \(\pi\otimes \pi^+_{\lambda}\) of representations \(\pi^+_{\lambda}\) of series (c) and representations \(\pi\) of other series (a), (b), (d). The main result gives a list of irreducible unitary representations which form the discrete spectrum of this tensor product. The investigation is based on the asymptotic behaviour of weight modules in the space \(V\) of \(\pi\otimes \pi^+_{\lambda}\). This discrete spectrum turns out to be finite. In particular, the representation \(\pi^c_{\sigma, \tau}\) of the complementary series appears with multiplicity one and only in the following tensor products: (1) \(\pi^-_{\sigma}\otimes \pi^+_{\tau}\); (2) \(\pi^-_{\sigma-a}\otimes \pi^+_{\tau}\) if \(0<\sigma+\tau< 1\); (3) \(\pi^-_{\sigma}\otimes \pi^+_{\tau+a}\) if \(1<\sigma+\tau< 2\). The subspace where this \(\pi^c_{\sigma, \tau}\) acts has trivial intersection with the space of smooth vectors in the space \(V\).