Spherical functions on the space of $p$-adic unitary hermitian matrices II, the case of odd size

Abstract: We are interested in the harmonic analysis on $p$-adic homogeneous spaces based on spherical functions. In the present paper, we investigate the space $X$ of unitary hermitian matrices of odd size over a ${\mathfrak p}$-adic field of odd residual characteristic, which is a continuation of our previous paper where we have studied for even size matrices. First we give the explicit representatives of the Cartan decomposition of $X$ and introduce a typical spherical function $\omega(x;z)$ on $X$. After studying the functional equations, we give an explicit formula for $\omega(x;z)$, where Hall-Littlewood polynomials of type $C_n$ appear as a main term, though the unitary group acting on $X$ is of type $BC_n$. By spherical transform, we show the Schwartz space ${\mathcal S}(K \backslash X)$ is a free Hecke algebra ${\mathcal H}(G, K)$-module of rank $2^n$, where $2n+1$ is the size of matrices in $X$, and give parametrization of all the spherical functions on $X$ and the explicit Plancherel formula on ${\mathcal S}(K \backslash X)$.