Special functions associated with \(K\)-types of degenerate principal series of \(\mathrm{Sp}(n,\mathbb{C})\) (Q2216707)

This article is devoted to the study of special vectors contained in various incarnations of generalized principal series representations induced from maximal parabolic subgroups of the complex symplectic group \(\mathrm{Sp}(n,\mathbf{C})\). After reviewing the well-known decomposition of the Hilbert space \(L^2(S^{4n-1})\) under the natural action of \(\mathrm{Sp}(n)\times\mathrm{Sp}(1)\) in terms of spherical harmonics, the author uses quaternionic geometry to establish the existence and uniqueness of bi-invariant spherical harmonics and determines an explicit hypergeometric equation that they satisfy. The other main result in the paper concerns certain vectors in the so-called \textit{non-standard} picture of the degenerate principal representations. This picture was introduced by \textit{T. Kobayashi} et al. [J. Funct. Anal. 260, No. 6, 1682--1720 (2011; Zbl 1217.22003)] for real symplectic groups and adapted to the complex case by the reviewer in [J. Funct. Anal. 262, No. 9, 4160--4180 (2012; Zbl 1242.22017)]. It is the image of the the classical non-compact picture under a partial Fourier transform afforded by the fact that the unipotent radicals of the inducing parabolic subgroups are Heisenberg groups. The author calculates the image in this picture of particular highest weight vectors, showing that they can be expressed in terms of modified Bessel functions.