Harmonic analysis of spherical functions on
Denote by the algebra of spherical integrable functions on , with convolution as multiplication. This is a commutative semi-simple algebra, and we use its Gelfand transform to study the ideals in . In particular, we are interested in conditions on an ideal that ensure that it is all of , or that it is . Spherical functions on are naturally represented as radial functions on the unit disk in the complex plane. Using this representation, these results are applied to characterize harmonic...