The reproducing kernel of $\mathcal H^2$ and radial eigenfunctions of the hyperbolic Laplacian

Abstract

In the paper we characterize the reproducing kernel $\mathcal {K}_{n,h}$ for the Hardy space $\mathcal {H}^2$ of hyperbolic harmonic functions on the unit ball $\mathbb {B}$ in $\mathbb {R}^n$. Specifically we prove that $$\mathcal {K}_{n,h}(x,y) = \sum _{\alpha =0}^\infty S_{n,\alpha }(\lvert x\rvert )S_{n,\alpha }(\lvert y\rvert ) Z_\alpha (x,y),$$ where the series converges absolutely and uniformly on $K\times \mathbb {B}$ for every compact subset $K$ of $\mathbb {B}$. In the above, $S_{n,\alpha }$ is a hypergeometric function and $Z_\alpha$ is the reproducing kernel of the space of spherical harmonics of degree α. In the paper we prove that $$0\le \mathcal K_{n,h}(x,y) \le \frac {C_n}{(1-2\langle x,y\rangle + \lvert x \rvert^2 \lvert y \rvert^2)^{n-1}},$$ where $C_n$ is a constant depending only on $n$. It is known that the diagonal function $\mathcal K_{n,h}(x,x)$ is a radial eigenfunction of the hyperbolic Laplacian $\varDelta_h$ on $\mathbb{B}$ with eigenvalue $\lambda _2 = 8(n-1)^2$. The result for $n=4$ provides motivation that leads to an explicit characterization of all radial eigenfunctions of $\varDelta_h$ on $\mathbb{B}$. Specifically, if $g$ is a radial eigenfunction of $\varDelta_h$ with eigenvalue $\lambda _\alpha = 4(n-1)^2\alpha (\alpha -1)$, then $$g(r) = g(0) \frac {p_{n,\alpha }(r^2)}{(1-r^2)^{(\alpha -1)(n-1)}},$$ where $p_{n,\alpha }$ is again a hypergeometric function. If α is an integer, then $p_{n,\alpha }(r^2)$ is a polynomial of degree $2(\alpha -1)(n-1)$.