Failure of $L^p$ symmetry of zonal spherical harmonics

Abstract

In this paper, we show that the 2-sphere does not exhibit symmetry of $L^p$ norms of eigenfunctions of the Laplacian for $p\geq 6$. In other words, there exists a sequence of spherical eigenfunctions $\psi_n$, with eigenvalues $\lambda_n\to\infty$ as $n\to\infty$, such that the ratio of the $L^p$ norms of the positive and negative parts of the eigenfunctions does not tend to $1$ as $n\to\infty$ when $p\geq 6$. Our proof relies on fundamental properties of the Legendre polynomials and Bessel functions of the first kind.