Reflection positivity on spheres

Abstract

In this article we specialize a construction of a reflection positive Hilbert space due to Dimock and Jaffe–Ritter to the sphere $${{\mathbb {S}}}^n$$. We determine the resulting Osterwalder–Schrader Hilbert space, a construction that can be viewed as the step from euclidean to relativistic quantum field theory. We show that this process gives rise to an irreducible unitary spherical representation of the orthochronous Lorentz group $$G^c = \mathop {{\mathrm{O}}{}}\nolimits _{1,n}({{\mathbb {R}}})^{\uparrow }$$ and that the representations thus obtained are the irreducible unitary spherical representations of this group. A key tool is a certain complex domain $$\Xi $$, known as the crown of the hyperboloid, containing a half-sphere $${{\mathbb {S}}}^n_+$$ and the hyperboloid $${{\mathbb {H}}}^n$$ as totally real submanifolds. This domain provides a bridge between those two manifolds when we study unitary representations of $$G^c$$ in spaces of holomorphic functions on $$\Xi $$. We connect this analysis with the boundary components which are the de Sitter space and a bundle over the space of future pointing lightlike vectors.