Sharp Local estimates for the Hermite eigenfunctions
Abstract.
We investigate the concentration of eigenfunctions for the Hermite operator in by establishing local bounds over the compact sets with arbitrary dilations and translations. These new results extend the local estimates by Thangavelu [62] and improve those derived from Koch-Tataru [45], and explain the special phenomenon that the global bounds decrease in when . The key -estimates show that the local probabilities decrease away from the boundary , and then they satisfy Bohr’s correspondence principle in any dimension. The proof uses the Hermite spectral projection operator represented by Mehler’s formula for the Hermite-Schrödinger propagator , and the strategy developed by Thangavelu [62] and Jeong-Lee-Ryu [40]. We also exploit an explicit version of the stationary phase lemma and Hörmander’s oscillatory integral theorem. Using Koch-Tataru’s strategy, we construct appropriate examples to illustrate the possible concentrations and show the optimality of our local estimates.
1. Introduction
In the seminal work of Sogge [52], he proved the eigenfunction bounds for elliptic operators on compact manifolds. They are related to a variable coefficient version of Stein-Tomas restriction theorem and a number of core problems in harmonic analysis and PDEs. Sogge’s bounds are sharp on the sphere , because of its periodic Hamilton flow and many highly concentrated eigenfunctions, such as Gaussian beams and zonal functions. To investigate the concentration of eigenfunctions on manifolds, the bounds over geodesic balls and tubes have been studied, see Bourgain [12], Blair-Sogge [6, 7, 8, 9, 10], Burq-Gérard-Tzvetkov [17], Han [29], Hezari-Rivière [32], Sogge [53], Sogge-Zelditch [56] and references therein. Specifically, Sogge [53] proved the following eigenfunction estimates over the geodesic balls with center and radius
(1.1) |
where Inj is the injectivity radius of the compact manifold . These estimates are saturated on the standard spheres by zonal functions, and can be improved under some dynamical or geometric assumption, such as having everywhere nonpositive curvature. Sogge [53] also established the connection between local and global estimates
(1.2) |
One key ingredient in the proof of (1.2) is the finite propagation speed of wave equations.
The Hermite operator in shares some similar features with the spherical Laplacian, such as periodic Hamilton flow and many highly concentrated eigenfunctions, and the problem of obtaining eigenfunction bounds has received considerable interest in the context of Bochner-Riesz means [61, 60, 62, 44, 39, 21, 20, 19, 22], as well as unique continuation problems [25, 26, 46]. To understand the nodal sets of the Hermite eigenfunctions in , the sizes of nodal sets in small balls have been studied, see Bérard-Helffer [4, 3], Hanin-Zelditch-Zhou [30, 31], Beck-Hanin [2] and Jin [43]. In this paper, we investigate the concentration of the Hermite eigenfunctions in by establishing sharp bounds over compact sets. Similar local estimates has already been considered by Thangavelu [62] and Koch-Tataru [45], motivated by the Bochner-Riesz conjecture and its local version, and the unique continuation problems.
The Hermite functions are eigenfunctions of the one dimensional Hermite operator
They are
The Hermite functions form an orthonormal basis in after normalization.
In dimension , the Hermite eigenfunctions satisfy
and a complete set of eigenfunctions is given by
(1.3) |
where the corresponding eigenvalue is , , . The multiplicity of the eigenvalue is .
1.1. Global estimates
Koch-Tataru [45, Corollary 3.2] proved the following global eigenfunction bounds
(1.4) |
where for ,
(1.5) |
and for ,
(1.6) |
See Figure 1. These results strengthen those of Karadzhov [44] and Thangavelu [62]. It is interesting to observe that the exponent is decreasing when , and increasing when . It is due to the special concentration features of the eigenfunctions, see the discussion after Theorem 3. At the kink point , it is known that [47]
(1.7) |
The log factor is necessary when . Recently, the log loss has been removed by Jeong-Lee-Ryu [41] for . Their significant improvements are due to a new phenomenon concerning the asymmetric localization near the sphere , see [41, Theorem 1.2]. One may also refer to [40, 39, 42] for their related works on Bochner-Riesz means and bounds for the Hermite spectral projection operator.

The Hermite eigenfunctions are essentially concentrated in the ball and have an exponential Airy type decay beyond this threshold. As was observed in [45], the behavior of eigenfunctions inside the ball is not very different from (a rescaling of) what happens in a bounded domain. But considerable care is required near the boundary , where the concentration scales are different. Consequently, Koch-Tataru [45] split the space into overlapping dyadic parts with respect to the distance to the boundary
Note that the thickness of the annulus is comparable to its distance to the boundary.
To state the main theorem in [45], we define the spaces of functions in with norm
with the usual modification when . For we let
Koch-Tataru [45] proved that for ,
(1.8) |
and for ,
(1.9) |
As a corollary, one can obtain bounds over these dyadic annuli. For
(1.10) |
(1.11) |
and for
(1.12) |
(1.13) |
One may observe that the local estimate over the dilated ball has no improvement on the trivial bound. Similarly, the local bounds in (1.10) cannot essentially improve the global estimate (1.7) over the whole space. Moreover, the local bounds (1.12) over strengthen Thangavelu’s estimates [62, Theorem 2]
(1.14) |
where is any fixed compact set in . This means that replacing by a much larger dilated ball does not affect the bounds. This interesting phenomenon can be explained by the existence of the Hermite eigenfunctions with point concentration near the origin. See Section 5 and [45, Example 5.2].
1.2. Bohr’s correspondence principle
Now let’s go back to the starting point of this study. Bohr’s correspondence principle demands that classical physics and quantum physics give the same answer when the systems become large, see [11, 63]. For the classical harmonic oscillator, when a particle’s potential energy is equal to its energy level, it moves at its slowest speed and has the highest probability of being detected around those points. We call these points turning points, which actually correspond to the boundary . By the correspondence principle, we would expect that for a quantum harmonic oscillator, for eigenstates with large energy, their probability density should also peak near these turning points in some sense. For the one-dimensional case, let
As in Szegö [58, p. 201] and Koch-Tataru [45, Lemma 5.1], the normalized eigenfunctions satisfy
where , . Obviously the maximum values of Hermite eigenfunctions occur near the turning points , see Figure 2 by Wolfram Mathematica.

However, the eigenfunctions become more complicated in higher dimensions. Koch-Tataru [45] showed that there are eigenfunctions that attain maximal growth near the origin. This phenomenon seems to violate Bohr’s correspondence principle, and suggests that it may be not suitable to measure only by the local norm. A more reliable choice should be the local norm, i.e. local probability, since the square of the amplitude is interpreted as a probability density. As we will see in Theorem 1, the local probability over a compact set, such as the unit ball with arbitrary center, decreases as it moves away from the boundary . This satisfies Bohr’s correspondence principle.
1.3. Main theorems
Let be any fixed compact set in , and . For , let
(1.15) |
be the compact set with dilation rate and translation vector . We shall restrict and , since the Hermite eigenfunctions are essentially supported in the ball . The bounds (1.14) of the Hermite eigenfunctions over the fixed compact sets for have been established by Thangavelu [62], motivated by the local version of the Bochner-Riesz conjecture. Koch-Tataru [45] strengthened those of Thangavelu [62] as well as Karadzhov [44] by obtaining global bounds over and dyadic annuli (including the dilated ball ), and they also observed that eigenfunctions may concentrate in some small compact subsets, e.g. balls and tubes.
To our best knowledge, compared to the Laplace eigenfunctions on compact manifolds, the picture of the Hermite eigenfunction estimates are still far from complete. See Section 6 for a list of related open problems. So we aim to investigate these problems in a series of works. In this paper, we first establish sharp estimates over the compact sets with arbitrary dilations and translations, which extend the local estimates of Thangavelu [62] and improve those derived from Koch-Tataru [45]. Our main theorem (Theorem 1) gives sharp local bounds (local probabilities) over the compact sets with arbitrary dilations and translations.
Theorem 1.




These results improve the bounds derived from Koch-Tataru’s estimates (1.8) and (1.9) when . The endpoints and correspond to the sizes of two different kinds of eigenfunction concentrations: point concentration and tube concentration respectively. These are similar to the eigenfunctions of the spherical Laplacian, e.g. zonal functions and Gaussian beams. Indeed, Koch-Tataru [45] used the eigenbasis (1.3) and linear combinations to construct two kinds of eigenfunctions concentrated in the dyadic annulus . One concentrates in the ball of radius , while the other concentrates in the tube with length and radius . We shall exploit the strategy in [45] to construct new intermediate examples between these two extreme cases, and prove the sharpness of local estimates, see Section 5 for the detailed construction.
For compact sets with fixed size , we shall discuss the relation between their locations and the local bounds. It is interesting to note that the bounds (1.16) with larger than the threshold are decreasing in with the decay rate when . See Figure 4. This suggests that the local probabilities are decreasing away from the boundary and then satisfy Bohr’s correspondence principle. When the size is smaller than the threshold , there are some significant differences between one dimension and higher dimensions. See Figures 5, 6. It is because in the sense of norm, higher dimensional eigenfunctions can concentrate away from the boundary, while one dimensional eigenfunctions only concentrate near the boundary.
An important special case of Theorem 1 is the case, which extends Thangavelu’s local estimates (1.14) to all .
Theorem 2.
Let be any fixed compact set in . Then for we have
(1.17) |
where
is Sogge’s exponent. These bounds are sharp.
Theorem 2 is new for . It is enlightening to compare (1.17) with Sogge’s estimates [52] on compact manifolds
(1.18) |
This phenomenon suggests that the Hermite eigenfunctions locally resemble the rescaled Laplace eigenfunctions.
Furthermore, optimal local estimates for all can be obtained by the interpolation between Theorem 1 and Koch-Tataru’s bounds.
Theorem 3.
Let be the compact set in (1.15) and , and . Then for we have
(1.19) |
where for
and for
and for
These bounds are sharp.
Here we use the convention that the endpoints when , and when . At the kink point , the local bounds for coincide with the global estimates (1.7). The number is essentially the distance between the compact and the boundary , and obviously .
Theorem 3 improves the local bounds derived from Koch-Tataru’s estimates (1.8) and (1.9) when and . Moreover, for any fixed , we can use Theorem 3 to determine the locations of (i.e. conditions on ) that can attain the maximal local norms
These tables demonstrate some new concentration features of the eigenfunctions. For , the maximal local bounds significantly improve the global estimates whenever . However, the maximal local bounds improve the global estimates (1.4) for and . This phenomenon suggests that the Hermite eigenfunctions highly concentrate in any “small” compact set with size , in terms of the norm with less than . But this kind of concentration is possible for all larger . These features of the eigenfunctions explain why the exponent in (1.4) is decreasing in when , and increasing when . See Figure 1.
max bounds | |||
conditions on |
max bounds | |||
conditions on |
max bounds | ||
---|---|---|
conditions on |
1.4. Paper structure and proof sketch
The paper is structured as follows. In Section 2, we presents the proof of the stationary phase lemma with a precise remainder term. In Section 3, we review the representation of the kernel of the Hermite spectral projection operator. In Section 4, we prove Theorem 1. In Section 5, we show the sharpness of local bounds. In Section 6, we discuss some related questions for the Hermite eigenfunctions.
Proof sketch of Theorem 1. We handle the Hermite spectral projection operator represented by Mehler’s formula for the kernel of the Hermite-Schrödinger propagator . By the strategy developed by Thangavelu [61, 60, 62] and Jeong-Lee-Ryu [41, 40, 39, 42], we explicitly analyze the associated oscillatory integrals by the stationary phase lemma and Hörmander’s oscillatory integral theorem [35]. The main difficulties lie in the discussions concerning the critical points of the phase functions in these oscillatory integrals, which require new insights. We find that in our local problem, the Hermite spectral projection operator essentially consists of two oscillatory integral operators with different phase functions, modulo some remainder terms. One phase function behaves like the Euclidean distance function, while the other one has no obvious geometric meaning. Nevertheless, both of the phase functions satisfy the mixed Hessian condition (with rank ) in Hörmander’s oscillatory integral theorem.
Proof sketch of Theorem 3. When , we may apply Koch-Tataru’s estimates (1.12), (1.13) and then the local bounds follow from Hölder’s inequality. When , we may essentially cover the set by the dyadic annuli with (and the boundary annuli, if ), so the local bounds are implied by Koch-Tataru’s bounds over these annuli. When , the set is essentially covered by the annulus with , so the local bounds follow from the interpolation between Koch-Tataru’s bounds over and the local bounds in Theorem 1.
1.5. Notations
Throughout this paper, means for some positive constants that depend only on dimension and the number of times we take derivatives and integrate by parts. In particular, if is a large constant and , then we denote . If and , we denote . The notation means the Lebesgue norm of in . Sometimes we abbreviate the phase function as when are fixed, and denote its partial derivative with respect to by .
2. Stationary phase lemmas
In this section, we review the one dimensional stationary phase lemma, which is important to analyze the kernel of the spectral projection operator. It is classical and there are many excellent references, e.g. Hörmander [36], Stein [57] and Sogge [54]. Using the idea in Hörmander [36, Theorem 7.7.5], we prove the explicit stationary phase Lemma 4 with a more precise remainder term than the one presented in [36].
2.1. Explicit non-stationary phase lemma
Let . Let be real-valued. We estimate
Let , and . We define
Note that
where , and . For example,
Moreover, for ,
where . Here we use the convention that the sum is 1 if .
Suppose that on . Integrating by parts times, we have
where , and satisfies .
2.2. Explicit stationary phase lemma
Suppose that is real-valued and satisfies . Let
(2.1) |
(2.2) |
Then . Suppose that
Then
Thus
Let
For , we need to estimate
For the last term,
where satisfies and , and satisfies .
In particular, if , , and for , then we have an elegant estimate
(2.3) |
by observing that
Fix . For , let
(2.4) |
where is defined in (2.1). Then for .
Recall the Fourier transform formula for Gaussian functions (e.g. [36, Theorem 7.6.1]) for
Then we obtain
where is between and . The remainder term satisfies
In summary, we state the explicit stationary phase lemma.
Lemma 4.
Let be real-valued and satisfy . Suppose that satisfies for some . If , , and for , then for and , we have
where
Here norms are taken over , and is the Fourier transform of on . The implicit constants are independent of , and only depend on and .
The remainder term in Lemma 4 is more precise than the one presented in [36, Theorem 7.7.5]. Indeed, the proof in [36] uses Sobolev inequalities to simplify the integrals involving and estimates them by the sup norms of the derivatives of . It does not exploit the rapid decay of the Fourier transform , which is crucial in our applications.
3. The spectral projection operator
In this section, we introduce the representation formula of the Hermite spectral projection operator. It is known that the kernel of the Hermite spectral projection operator can be represented by Mehler’s formula for the kernel of the Hermite-Schrödinger propagator . One may refer to Jeong-Lee-Ryu [40, Section 2.1] for a detailed introduction. Let
where is an orthonormal basis in and . Each is an eigenfunction of with eigenvalue , and is a tensor product of the Hermite functions on .
Since for , formally we have
See [40, Section 2.1] for a detailed proof. Recall the formula (see [50], [60, p. 11])
where , with and . Then the kernel of can be written as
(3.1) |
where
In applications, it is more convenient to deal with the rescaled kernel with
(3.2) |
where
Here the square root . By inserting smooth cutoff functions, we split the integral (3.2) into four parts
(3.3) |
By changing variables, we obtain
where is a smooth even function supported in satisfying near 0 and near , and for . In the following, we mainly deal with , and the other terms can be handled similarly.
4. Proof of Theorem 1
In this section, we prove Theorem 1. The proof uses the strategy developed by Thangavelu [61, 60, 62] and Jeong-Lee-Ryu [41, 40, 39, 42]. They handle the oscillatory integrals by an explicit analysis on the critical points of the phase functions. By a standard argument, we only need to prove the operator bound (4.3) associated with the rescaled kernel . Since the kernel is represented as an oscillatory integral in Section 3, we analyze the critical points of the phase function, and then split the integral properly into several parts with respect to the critical points. For the parts away from the critical points, we can handle them using integration by parts and Young’s inequality. The crucial parts are those around the critical points. We need to use the stationary phase lemma in Section 2 to calculate the kernel explicitly and then apply Hörmander’s oscillatory integral theorem (see e.g. [35], [54, Theorem 2.1.1]).
Let , , and .
First, we only need to prove
(4.1) |
since the remaining two cases and can be handled easily. Indeed, when , we use the bounds in (1.12) and (1.13) to obtain the desired local bound . When , we can cover by some dyadic annuli and use (1.10) and (1.11) to get the desired bound .
Clearly, the condition in (4.1) implies that .
Note that
Let be the operator associated with the rescaled kernel
(4.2) |
Note that
It suffices to prove
(4.3) |
under the assumption that .
4.1. Proof of the operator bound (4.3)
Let . Let . Since , we have
Thus, .
By (1.12) and we have
After rescaling, we still have the same bound
This operator bound implies the uniform bound of the kernel for
(4.4) |
Consider the truncated kernel
(4.5) |
where is supported in and equal to 1 in , and
(4.6) |
By Young’s inequality, (4.4) and , the operator associated with the kernel (4.5) has norm bounded by
(4.7) |
which is desired. So in the following we only need to handle the truncated kernel
where on the support. Recall that (3.3) gives
We only handle , and other terms are similar.
To analyze the oscillatory integral , we calculate the derivative of the phase function
(4.8) |
By solving , when we get two critical points satisfying
A simple calculation gives , and , see (4.25) and (4.49) for details. In the special case , there is exactly one critical point . To see this, we first notice that , since . If , then , so we have and , which gives . So we always have . We may assume that in the following, and the special case is relatively easy and can be handled with obvious modifications.
A crucial observation is that . Indeed, if , then and . So , which contradicts to the assumption above. Later we will use this observation in (4.57) to handle the second critical point .
We can write
(4.9) |
Next, we split the integral into the following five parts.
-
(1)
-
(2)
-
(3)
-
(4)
-
(5)
Let be a Littlewood-Paley bump function, we will use it for smooth cutoff, and for dyadic decompositions several times later.
We first handle the three parts using integration by parts and Young’s inequality.
Part (1): For , by (4.1) we have
(4.10) |
We split the integral
(4.11) |
where is supported in and equal to 1 in .
By (4.10), integration by parts gives
Then by Young’s inequality the operator associated with the kernel has norm bounded by
Since , we have
which is better than desired if is large enough, since . Here
Part (3): For , by (4.1) we get
(4.12) |
We dyadically decompose the integral as
(4.13) |
where satisfies in .
By (4.12), integration by parts gives
Since , we get
By Young’s inequality, the operator associated with the kernel given by (4.13) has norm bounded by
this is better than desired, since .
Part (5): For , by (4.1) we have
(4.14) |
We need to estimate the integral
(4.15) |
where is supported in and equal to 1 in . By (4.14) and , integration by parts gives the bound for the integral
Then by Young’s inequality, the operator associated with the kernel given by (4.15) has norm bounded by
(4.16) |
if is large enough. The last inequality uses when , and uses when .
Next, we handle the remaining two parts (2) and (4) by the explicit stationary phase lemma and Hörmander’s oscillatory integral theorem.
Part (2): Contribution of the first critical point.
For , by (4.1) we obtain
(4.17) |
(4.18) |
(4.19) |
We need to estimate the kernel given by the oscillatory integral
(4.20) |
Let
Thus, by (4.17), (4.18), (4.19) we have
Then by the stationary phase Lemma 4, we have the following expansion with a remainder term estimate
where are constant coefficients.
Since , the kernel corresponding to the remainder term is bounded by
(4.21) |
Then by Young’s inequality, the operator associated with (4.21) has norm bounded by
which is better than desired if is large enough, since . Here
Since all the terms in the expansion share the same oscillatory factor, it suffices to handle the leading term
(4.22) |
where we use (4.17).
Recall that , , and
(4.23) |
Step 1 of Part (2): Analyze the first critical point.
Recall that
(4.24) |
We have
(4.25) |
Let
Then
(4.26) |
where and
(4.27) |
Thus, we obtain
(4.28) |
Moreover,
(4.29) |
where and
(4.30) |
Taking partial derivatives on (4.24) we get
Then
(4.31) |
Let be the identity matrix. Note that
(4.32) |
Step 2 of Part (2): Apply oscillatory integral theorem.
Since , by (4.22) we need to estimate the norm of the operator associated with the kernel
where . Since the phase function behaves like the rescaled distance function, we may use an argument similar to Burq-Gérard-Tzvetkov [17, Section 6].
Next, we introduce a partition of unity locally finite (uniformly with respect to ):
where . Write
Note that on the support of we have . So
on the support of . Let be the operator with kernel . Then we need to handle
Note that the kernel of
vanishes when . Thus, Cotlar–Stein lemma ([57, Chapter VII]) implies
(4.34) |
To estimate , we consider the kernel of
Let , . Let be the operator associated with the rescaled kernel
where
Since on the support of , by (4.26), (4.27), (4.29) and (4.30) we have
(4.35) |
(4.36) |
(4.37) |
in topology as . So for large we can write the kernel as
where is a smooth function on the support of the kernel and satisfies
(4.38) |
The implicit constant is independent of .
By Hörmander’s oscillatory integral theorem, we have
By rescaling,
By (4.34), we get
Then
which is expected.
Part (4): Contribution of the second critical point.
For , by (4.1) we obtain
(4.39) |
(4.40) |
(4.41) |
We need to estimate the kernel given by the oscillatory integral
(4.42) |
Let
Thus, by (4.39), (4.40), (4.41) we have
Then by the stationary phase Lemma 4, we have the following expansion with a remainder term estimate
where are constant coefficients.
Since , the kernel corresponding to the remainder term is bounded by
(4.43) |
Then by Young’s inequality, the operator associated with (4.43) has norm bounded by
(4.44) |
if is large enough. The last inequality uses when , and uses when .
Since all the terms in the expansion share the same oscillatory factor, it suffices to handle the leading term
(4.45) |
where we use (4.39). We split (4.45) into two parts
We can handle by Young’s inequality, since it is bounded and has small support. Indeed, the operator associated with has norm bounded by
(4.46) | ||||
Here we use (4.7) and . So it remains to handle .
Step 1 of Part (4): Analyze the second critical point.
The calculation is similar to Step 1 of Part (2), but the behavior of the phase function associated with the second critical point are very different. So we still provide all the details. Recall that , and
(4.47) |
Moreover,
(4.48) |
Note that
(4.49) |
Thus, we get
(4.50) |
We may write
(4.51) |
then we obtain
(4.52) |
Then
(4.55) |
Note that
Then by (4.55) the eigenvalues of the matrix are (multiplicity) and 0.
Step 2 of Part (4): Apply oscillatory integral theorem.
By rotational symmetry, we may assume that . Since , we consider the operator with the kernel
(4.56) |
Here . Unlike the first critical point, the phase function does not behave like the distance function , so we need to use a different argument to handle the associated oscillatory integral operator.
We first simplify the matrix in (4.55). Note that , . The big oh notations are in the sense of some matrix norm. We have
where . Moreover,
(4.57) |
Here we use the fact that . See the observation before (4.1).
Thus,
Let . Then
This implies
as .
Consider the operator with the rescaled kernel
where
These bounds follow from rescaling the derivatives estimates above, and the implicit constants are independent of .
For fixed , we define
Suppose that supp . Then by Minkovski and Hölder inequalities,
Thus, by Hörmander’s oscillatory integral theorem we have
By rescaling,
which is exactly the desired bound. So we complete the proof.
5. Proof of the sharpness
In this section, we construct new examples to prove the sharpness of local bounds. The sharpness means that for each pair of , there exist eigenfunctions saturating the bound (1.19). We shall use the strategy by Koch-Tataru [45].
5.1. Construction of eigenfunctions in .
For , , and fixed with , let
Then we can construct the normalized eigenfunctions (dependent on ) so that for most we have
(5.1) |
To see this, we shall modify the construction of Koch-Tataru’s Example 5.4 [45]. Fix a positive integer and we consider the eigenfunctions with eigenvalue . We consider the set of indices
which has size . For some subset of of comparable size, let
where are one dimensional normalized Hermite functions. By orthogonality,
(5.2) |
To determine the subset such that (5.1) holds, we need to avoid the cancellations in the summation. We shall use the asymptotic formulas in Section 1.2. Note that for any , we have
(5.3) |
whenever , since
Moreover, let and
We have for each , the value of varies in an interval of size as varies in an interval of size , since . So for most .
Moreover, we have
(5.4) |
since
It remains to insure that the functions have the same sign for all . Since
we may integrate this with respect to (from to ) and then with respect to (from to ):
(5.5) |
The remainder term is since and .
Fix a large constant . For , let
Since , by the pigeonhole principle there is some with
So . Then we have for any two indices in , the corresponding two phases are close modulo by (5.5), namely
The examples constructed above can be viewed as intermediate cases between the two kinds of extreme examples in Koch-Tataru [45], which correspond to (point concentration) and (tube concentration) respectively. Furthermore, the construction of eigenfunctions in is essentially the same as the construction above with .
5.2. Proof of the sharpness
Fix such that and . Let be the ball .
Case 1: When , we choose and then is essentially contained in the tube . So we get
which saturates (1.19).
Case 2: When , we may choose . So we have and then . Thus,
Moreover, we can choose , and then the tube is essentially a ball covered by . Since , we get
These saturate (1.19).
Case 3: When , we fix some integer with . The ball may intersect the annuli for these . If we choose , then the tube is essentially contained in and . So we obtain
Moreover, we may choose . Then the tube is essentially a ball covered by . Since , we get
These saturate (1.19) since . We complete the proof of the sharpness.
6. Further discussions
In this section, we discuss some open problems on the Hermite eigenfunction estimates.
-
(i)
Restriction estimates on submanifolds. Let be a totally geodesic submanifold (not necessarily compact) in , e.g. straight lines, hyperplanes passing through the origin. The question is to establish sharp estimates over for the Hermite eigenfunctions. See Burq-Gérard-Tzvetkov [17] and Hu [37] for the restriction estimates for the Laplace eigenfunctions. See also Blair [5], Blair-Sogge [6, 7, 8, 9, 10], Bourgain [12], Bourgain-Rudnick [13], Canzani-Galkowski-Toth [18], Chen-Sogge [24], Chen [23], Greenleaf-Seeger [28], Hassell-Tacy [34], Hezari [33], Huang-Zhang [38], Sogge-Xi-Zhang [55], Sogge-Zelditch [56], Tataru [59], Xi-Zhang [66], Wang-Zhang [64], Wyman [65], Zhang [68].
-
(ii)
Kakeya-Nikodym type estimates. Let be any fixed compact set in . Let . For real numbers , let . Let
The question is to establish sharp local estimates over for the Hermite eigenfunctions. The model case has been handled in this paper. In the case , the set is roughly a tube, and the local norms are similar to the Kakeya-Nikodym bounds considered in a series of works by Blair-Sogge [6, 7, 8, 9, 10], and closely related to the restriction estimates on straight lines.
-
(iii)
Bilinear and multilinear estimates. It is interesting to investigate the sharp bilinear and multilinear estimates for the Hermite eigenfunctions. See Burq-Gérard-Tzvetkov [14, 15, 16] for the bilinear and multilinear estimates for the Laplace eigenfunctions, and their applications to nonlinear Schrödinger equations. See also Guo-Han-Tacy [27] for the bilinear estimates of quasimodes.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Dr. Xiaoyan Su and Dr. Ying Wang for helpful discussions and comments during the research. The authors would like to thank Professor Sanghyuk Lee for helpful comments on the preprint. X.W. is partially supported by a startup grant from Hunan University. C.Z. is partially supported by NSFC Grant No.1237010173 and a startup grant from Tsinghua University.
Declarations
Data availability statement. Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analyzed during the current study.
Conflict of interests. The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.
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