A Fatou theorem for eigenfunctions of the Laplace-Beltrami operator in a symmetric space (Q796030)

By identifying the symmetric space \(X=G/K\) with AN (G being a semisimple Lie group and KAN an Iwasawa decomposition), and working on the nilpotent group N, the author proves various results on the behaviour at infinity of eigenfunctions of the Laplace-Beltrami operator. Let \(P(\lambda\),x,b) be the Poisson kernel \(P(\lambda,x,b)=\exp(-(\lambda +\rho | H(g^{- 1}k)))\) where \(\lambda \in {\mathfrak a}\), \(b=kM\in B=K/M\simeq G/MAN\) and \(x=gK\in X\) (here \({\mathfrak a}'\) and \({\mathfrak a}\) are identified via the Killing form). For f in \(L^ 1(B)\) (with quotient Haar measure on K/M), the function \(P_{\lambda}f(x)=\int_{B}db P(\lambda,x,b) f(b)\) is a joint eigenfunction of the invariant differential operators on X, while for f in \(L^ 1(B\times S_+)\), \[ Pf(x)=\int_{S_+}d\sigma \int_{B}db P(R\sigma,x,b)f(b,\sigma), \] where \(S_+\) is the subset of the unit sphere of \({\mathfrak a}\) contained in the same Weyl chamber as \(\rho\), is an eigenfunction of the Casimir operator. The results concern the pointwise behaviour at infinity of \(P_{\lambda}f/P_{\lambda}1\) and Pf/P1. For the first quotient, one has restricted convergence almost everywhere, and for the second, one has convergence as \(x\to \infty\), staying at a bounded distance from a geodesic \(\Gamma_{b,H}\), for almost all (b,H) in \(B\times S_+\).