A Cartan decomposition for Gelfand pairs and induction of spherical functions

Abstract

In this article we show a Cartan decomposition for reductive Riemannian Gelfand pairs and an induction of spherical functions for Riemannian Gelfand pairs. With the induction we find that the property of the symmetry of spherical functions, which is known for Riemannian symmetric pairs, can also be induced from the corresponding property of smaller dimension. A Fourier transform of a positive function for a Riemannian Gelfand pair with abelian unipotent radical is also given under some condition on its support by using the symmetry of spherical function.