Differential Operators on Non-compact Harmonic Manifolds

Abstract We study the algebra of differential operators on non-compact simply connected harmonic manifolds and provide sufficient conditions for them to have a radial fundamental solution and be surjective on the space of smooth function. Furthermore, we show that the algebra of differential operators that commute with taking averages over geodesic spheres is generated by the Laplacian. As an application of this, we show that the heat-semi group is dense in the radial $$L^1$$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"> <mml:msup> <mml:mi>L</mml:mi> <mml:mn>1</mml:mn> </mml:msup> </mml:math> space of a non-compact simply connected harmonic manifold. In the process, we provide a characterisation of the eigenfunctions of the Laplacian and therefore of the eigenfunctions of all differential operators commuting with taking spherical averages.