Strictly positive definite functions by integral transforms (Q2674674)

In this paper the authors consider \((X,\rho)\), a quasi-metric space, \((M,\mathcal{A},\mu)\), a measure space, \(\kappa:[0,\infty)\times M\to\mathbb{C}\), a kernel such that \(t\in M\mapsto\kappa(s,t)\) belongs to \(L^\infty(M)\) and define the \(\kappa\)-transform of a function \(f\in L^1(M)\) to be the function \(\mathcal{F}(f):[0,\infty)\mapsto\mathbb{C}\) given by \[ \mathcal{F}(f)(s) = \int_M f(t)\kappa(s,t)d\mu(t),\quad s\geq0. \] They first observe that when \(f\) is a nonnegative-valued function and \(s\in[0,\infty)\mapsto\kappa(s,t)\) is positive definite on \((X,\rho)\) for all \(t\in M\), then \(\mathcal{F}(f)\) is positive definite on \((X,\rho)\). Then they provide either sufficient or necessary conditions for the strict positive definiteness of the \(\kappa\)-transform \(\mathcal{F}(f)\) of a nonnegative-valued function \(f\). Also, sufficient conditions for the continuity of the \(\kappa\)-transform \(\mathcal{F}(f)\) of a function \(f\in L^1(M)\) are given. Some of the results obtained are applied to: \par i) positive definite functions on the Euclidean space \(\mathbb{R}^m\), namely, when \(m=1\) one obtains cosine-transforms and when \(m>1\), Fourier-Bessel-transforms; \par ii) positive definite functions on \((X,\rho)\) seen as extensions of certain real Laplace transforms, namely, \(\kappa\)-transform given by \[ \mathcal{F}(f)(s)=\int_0^\infty f(t)e^{-h(s)t}d\mu(t),\quad s\geq0, \] where \(h\) is a nonnegative-valued, conditionally negative definite function on \((X,\rho)\).