1. Introduction
The symmetric group
acts on
as a reflection group by permutation of coordinates. The group is generated by reflections in the mirrors
. The function
with parameter
κ is invariant under this action, and, for
, there are several measures that incorporate
and give rise to interesting orthogonality structures. The corresponding measure on the
N-torus is related to the Calogero–Sutherland quantum-mechanical model of
N identical particles on the circle with
interaction potential, and the measure
is related to the model of
N identical particles on the line with
interactions and harmonic confinement (see [
1] (Section 11.6)). This paper mainly concerns the measure on the unit sphere in
for which there is an orthogonal decomposition involving harmonic polynomials. In the present setting,
harmonic refers to the Laplacian operator
produced by the type-
A Dunkl operators.
For and set , that is, entries and are interchanged.
Definition 1. For a polynomial f and The (
Dunkl) operators
mutually commute and map polynomials to polynomials. The background for the theory can be found in the treatise ([
1] (Chapter 6, Chapter 10.2)). An orthogonal basis for
can be defined in terms of products
where
f comes from an orthogonal set of harmonic homogeneous polynomials and the Laguerre polynomial index
(for the theory of Laguerre polynomials, see Szegö [
2] (Section 5.1)). However, attempts to explicitly construct harmonic polynomials run into technical complications, presumably due to the fact that the sign-changes (example:
) are not elements of the symmetry group and thus the
symmetry of
can not be used. To start on the construction problem, we will determine all the harmonic homogeneous polynomials annihilated by
for
. They are the analogues of ordinary harmonic polynomials in two variables and thus we call them
planar. In this situation, there is a natural symmetry based on the transposition
: polynomials
f satisfying
are called
symmetric and those satisfying
are called
antisymmetric. Then,
preserves the symmetry type and
reverses it. This property is relevant since
.
Section 2 describes the basis of polynomials used in the construction, sets up and solves the recurrence equations required to produce symmetric and antisymmetric harmonic polynomials. In addition, the formulae for the actions of
on the harmonics are derived. In
Section 3, the inner product structures involving the weight function
are defined and the structural constants for the harmonic polynomials are computed. By means of Clifford algebra techniques, one can define an operator of Dirac type and
Section 4 describes this theory and produces the planar monogenic polynomials. Finally,
Section 5 contains technical material providing proofs for some of the results appearing in
Section 2 and
Section 3.
2. The p-Basis and Construction of Harmonic Polynomials
The natural numbers are denoted by . The largest integer is denoted by . Suppose f is a polynomial in then denotes the polynomial . To facilitate working with generating functions, we introduce the notation for the designated coefficient of f in the expansion in terms of a basis . Throughout the paper κ is a fixed parameter, implicit in , generally subject to .
The
p-basis associated with the operators
is constructed as follows: for
, the polynomials
are given by the generating function
then, for
(the multi-indices), define
. The set
is a basis for the polynomials for generic
κ. The key property is that
for
. From [
1] (Section 10.3), we find
if
and
if
Set up a symbolic calculus by letting
denote
; more formally, define a linear isomorphism from ordinary polynomials to polynomials in the variables
:
extended by linearity. Thus,
. In this form, the action of
(technically
) on a function of
is given by
The operators
and
replace
by 0 and
respectively, while
is the transposition. It suffices to examine the effect of the formula on monomials
and for
The first two terms produce
if
else
In the sum, the (typical) term for
is
A simple calculation shows that this is the image under Ψ of the corresponding term in Equation (1) . This method was used in [
3] to find planar harmonics of type
B (the group generated by sign-changes and permutation of coordinates).
From here on, we will be concerned with polynomials in
, that is, exactly the set of polynomials annihilated by
for
. Set
so that
. For each degree
, there are two independent harmonic polynomials, that is,
, and a convenient orthogonal decomposition is by the action of
; symmetric:
, and antisymmetric:
, to be designated by + and − superscripts, respectively. We use the operators
and
(note
). The harmonic polynomials will be expressed in the basis functions (symmetric)
and (antisymmetric)
with generating functions
(and
) given by
There are parity conditions:
implies
and
implies
. These are formal power series and convergence is not important (but is assured if
). The polynomials
and
are homogeneous of degree
n. The ordinary harmonic polynomials arise for
; however, the following formulae remain complicated for this specialization. The polynomial
reduces to
. By using complex variables, the derivation goes quickly: the real and imaginary parts of
are the symmetric and antisymmetric harmonic homogenous polynomials of degree
n, respectively. The expression expands to
The formulae for the desired polynomials can be obtained from the equation , , , for respectively. The noticeable difference between even and odd degrees n will appear again in the general κ case.
The following expressions are derived in
Section 5: (the Pochhammer symbol is given by
and
for
) for
and, for
,
The reason for the use of this basis is that the actions of
and
have relatively simple expressions. It is easy to verify that (set
for a variable
v):
After some calculations involving
, we obtain
Applying
to
and
yields
Applying these to the generating functions results in
We will state the expressions for the harmonic polynomials before their derivations; however, it is necessary to define two families of polynomials via three-term relations. The motivation comes later.
Definition 2. For define two families of polynomials by The first few polynomials are
and
The three-term recurrences and Favard’s theorem imply that both and are families of orthogonal polynomials for some (unknown) measures supported on , but they do not appear to be of Askey tableau type. There are relations between the two families, stated without proof: and .
Definition 3. For leteach is homogeneous of degree n. First, we show that the antisymmetric polynomials
are harmonic. We will use the relations (3) and (5) to produce symmetric harmonic polynomials from the antisymmetric ones. Combining Equations (3)–(5) obtains
Suppose
is harmonic; then, the coefficient of
in
is
The range of j is derived from the inequality , which is . Two sets of formulae arise depending on the parity of n. The equations are considered as recurrences.
Suppose
then the starting point is for
thus
To simplify the recurrences, let
; then,
and
which agrees with the recurrence for
with
.
Thus, the antisymmetric harmonic polynomial of degree
(normalized by
) is
Suppose
; then, the starting point is for
so that
Set
to obtain
Similarly to the previous calculation, let
; then,
and
This agrees with the recurrence for
with
. Thus, the antisymmetric harmonic polynomial of degree
(normalized by
) is
Applying
to a harmonic polynomial clearly produces another harmonic polynomial; thus, by Equation (5):
and
We have proven:
Proposition 1. The polynomials and are harmonic.
For use in the sequel, we find expressions for applied to and .
Proposition 2. The actions of on the antisymmetric polynomials areand the actions on the symmetric polynomials are Since the resulting polynomials are harmonic, it suffices to consider just one term in their expansions. The coefficients of the lowest index term (
,
,
,
for
, respectively) on the right sides arise from at most two terms on the left. The details are in
Section 5.
3. Inner Products and Structure Constants
Let
μ denote the Gaussian measure
on
, (where
is the Lebesgue measure), and let
m denote the normalized surface measure on
. The weight function is
. The constants
and
are defined by
and
. It is known (the Macdonald–Mehta–Selberg integral) that
; this integral appeared in the probability distribution of eigenvalues of random Hermitian matrices in Mehta’s investigations, and conjectures by Macdonald for integrals related to root systems—a proof using an integral of Selberg’s was eventually found (see Askey [
4]). There is an elegant proof applying to all finite reflection groups due to Etingof [
5]. There are three inner products for polynomials associated with
. For polynomials
define
(evaluated at );
, the Gaussian inner product;
The details can be found in [
1] (Chapter 7.2). There are important relations among them:
(note that the series
terminates for any polynomial
f) and if
f is homogeneous of degree
, then
Specialized to
, this shows that
and thus
As a consequence, if
f and
g are harmonic and homogeneous of degrees
, respectively, then
It is a fundamental result that implies .
To find
for the harmonic polynomials
, we will need the values of
and
at
. In terms of the generating functions,
thus
and
because
. Thus,
and
By the
symmetry (both
and
are invariant and
changes sign), the inner products
. Next, we compute the pairing
for the harmonic polynomials. Since they are annihilated by
for
, these values are given by
. We use the harmonicity of
that is,
The same relation holds when
f is replaced by
for any polynomial
q. Suppose
and express
If
, then
for odd
j and
Set
, and then
thus,
Proceeding similarly for
, where
for even
j, we obtain
and
First, the symmetric case (by Proposition 2):
and it follows by induction that
For the antisymmetric case:
and
The values
and
are found by computing the generating functions:
(the term in the denominator is
) and
Definition 4. For , and parameters , let The proof is in Proposition 4.
The values of and can now be found by Equation (6). The expressions are complicated due to the fact that sign-changes are not in the symmetry group.
5. Derivations of Various Formulae
This section contains the derivations of some of the formulae appearing in the paper. The formulae for
and
are found by means of the Chebyshev polynomials
and
(see [
2] (Section 4.1):
where
z is replaced by
and thus
. The last inner sum can be written as
where
except
. Then, use the expansion
for
and extract the coefficient of
to determine
. Applying the same technique to
, we obtain
Then, extract the coefficient of by means of the expansion for to find .
Proof. (of Proposition 2). The formulae for
have already been proven. For
, substitute
and
in Formula (4) to obtain
and thus
. Next, substitute
and
in Formula (4) to show that
For
, substitute
in Formula (2) to show
Next, substitute
in Formula (2) to show that
For
, substitute
in Formula (3) to show
Next, substitute
in Formula (3) to show
This completes the proof of Proposition 2.
To prove Proposition 3, note that the expressions for
and
have the form
with
and 2, respectively.
Proposition 4. For any and ,where is given in Definition 4. Proof. Denote the left hand side by
. The expansion process begins with
By a variant of the generating function for Gegenbauer polynomials (see [
2] (4.7.23)) with
,
changing the summation index
. Combining the expressions results in
changing the summation indices to
. Expand
and change indices replacing
m by
. Then,
The summation limits on i are derived from the bounds , , and . The last bound implies (if , the bound is and ). The bounds for imply that the two factors for do not vanish for , and this is sufficient for convergence of the series (if then the convergence requirement is ). This completes the proof for the formula for .
Investigating harmonic polynomials in that are -orthogonal to the planar polynomials might be a plausible topic for further research.