Orbital measures on \(\mathrm{SU}(2)/\mathrm{SO}(2)\) (Q895433)

Suppose \(G/K\) is a compact symmetric space and \(\mu \) is any continuous, \(K\)-bi-invariant measure. A classical result due to Ragozin states that \(\mu^{d}\) is absolutely continuous with respect to Haar measure on \(G\) (equivalently, in \(L^{1}(G)\)) where \(\mu ^{d}\) denotes the \(d\)-fold convolution product and \(d=\dim G/K\). In the case that \(G=\mathrm{SU}(n)\) and \(K=\mathrm{SO}(n)\), this was improved by \textit{S. K. Gupta} and \textit{K. E. Hare} [Monatsh. Math. 159, No. 1--2, 27--43 (2010; Zbl 1188.43009)] to \(d=n\) and this exponent was shown to be sharp. An important class of examples of \(K\)-bi-invariant measures are the orbital measures, \(\mu _{a}\), the invariant probability measures supported on the double coset \(KaK\). Based on the study of convolution products of orbital measures on compact Lie groups and algebras, it was conjectured that \(\mu _{a}^{k}\) would belong to the smaller space \(L^{2}(G)\) whenever \(\mu _{a}^{k}\in L^{1}(G)\). In this paper, the authors show that the conjecture is false for \(\mathrm{SU}(2)/\mathrm{SO}(2)\). They compute \(L^{2}\) norms by means of spherical functions and use these computations to prove that \(\mu _{a}^{3}\in L^{2}\) for all continuous orbital measures \(\mu _{a}\) on \(\mathrm{SU}(2)/\mathrm{SO}(2)\), but that there are such measures with \(\mu _{a}^{2}\in L^{1}\diagdown L^{2}\).