Analysis Of Spherical Symmetries In Euclidean Spaces

Analysis of Spherical Symmetries in Euclidean Spaces

This book gives a new and direct approach into the theories of special functions with emphasis on spherical symmetry in Euclidean spaces of ar bitrary dimensions. Essential parts may even be called elementary because of the chosen techniques. The central topic is the presentation of spherical harmonics in a theory of invariants of the orthogonal group. H. Weyl was one of the first to point out that spherical harmonics must be more than a fortunate guess to simplify numerical computations in mathematical physics. His opinion arose from his occupation with quan tum mechanics and was supported by many physicists. These ideas are the leading theme throughout this treatise. When R. Richberg and I started this project we were surprised, how easy and elegant the general theory could be. One of the highlights of this book is the extension of the classical results of spherical harmonics into the complex. This is particularly important for the complexification of the Funk-Hecke formula, which is successfully used to introduce orthogonally invariant solutions of the reduced wave equation. The radial parts of these solutions are either Bessel or Hankel functions, which play an important role in the mathematical theory of acoustical and optical waves. These theories often require a detailed analysis of the asymptotic behavior of the solutions. The presented introduction of Bessel and Hankel functions yields directly the leading terms of the asymptotics. Approximations of higher order can be deduced.

Analysis of Spherical Symmetries in Euclidean Spaces

Harmonic Analysis on Symmetric Spaces—Euclidean Space, the Sphere, and the Poincaré Upper Half-Plane

This unique text is an introduction to harmonic analysis on the simplest symmetric spaces, namely Euclidean space, the sphere, and the Poincaré upper half plane. This book is intended for beginning graduate students in mathematics or researchers in physics or engineering. Written with an informal style, the book places an emphasis on motivation, concrete examples, history, and, above all, applications in mathematics, statistics, physics, and engineering. Many corrections and updates have been incorporated in this new edition. Updates include discussions of P. Sarnak and others' work on quantum chaos, the work of T. Sunada, Marie-France Vignéras, Carolyn Gordon, and others on Mark Kac's question "Can you hear the shape of a drum?", A. Lubotzky, R. Phillips and P. Sarnak's examples of Ramanujan graphs, and, finally, the author's comparisons of continuous theory with the finite analogues. Topics featured throughout the text include inversion formulas for Fourier transforms, central limit theorems, Poisson's summation formula and applications in crystallography and number theory, applications of spherical harmonic analysis to the hydrogen atom, the Radon transform, non-Euclidean geometry on the Poincaré upper half plane H or unit disc and applications to microwave engineering, fundamental domains in H for discrete groups Γ, tessellations of H from such discrete group actions, automorphic forms, and the Selberg trace formula and its applications in spectral theory as well as number theory.