Hypercontractivity of the semigroup of the fractional Laplacian on the \(n\)-sphere (Q2042705)

The paper presents a further contribution to a problem concerning the hypercontractivity of the Poisson semigroup of \(e^{-t\sqrt{-\Delta}}\) from \(L^p(\mathbb{S}^n)\) to \(L^q(\mathbb{S}^n)\) for \(t>0\) on the sphere \(\mathbb{S}^n\) of dimension \(n\). This question was posed by \textit{C. E. Mueller} and \textit{F. B. Weissler} [J. Funct. Anal. 48, 252--283 (1982; Zbl 0506.46022)]. The main result of the paper states that for \(1<p\leq q\) the condition \(e^{-t\sqrt{n}}\leq \sqrt{\frac{p-1}{q-1}}\), carrying the smallest nonzero eigenvalue \(\sqrt{n}\) of \(\sqrt{-\Delta}\), is necessary and sufficient for dimension \(n\leq 3\). Noteworthy, in case of \(q>\max\{2,p\}\) the aforementioned condition is not sufficient for dimension \(n\geq 4\). The reason of the exceptionality for \(n=1,2,3\) is explained in detail in Subsection 2.2. In the remaining part of the paper it is proved, by contradiction, why the sufficient condition does not hold in general. Summing up, the question of finding an hypercontractivity equivalence for the Poisson semigroup on \(t>0\) for \(n\geq 4\) remains open.