The smoothness of convolutions of orbital measures on complex Grassmannian symmetric spaces

Abstract: It is well known that if $G/K$ is any irreducible symmetric space and $\mu _{a}$ is a continuous orbital measure supported on the double coset $KaK,$ then the convolution product, $\mu _{a}^{k},$ is absolutely continuous for some suitably large $k\leq \dim G/K$. The minimal value of $k$ is known in some symmetric spaces and in the special case of groups or rank one symmetric spaces it has even been shown that $\mu _{a}^{k}$ belongs to the smaller space $L^{2}$ for some $k$. Here we prove that this $L^{2}$ property holds for all the compact, complex Grassmanian symmetric spaces, $% SU(p+q)/S(U(p)\times U(q))$. Moreover, for the orbital measures at a dense set of points $a$, we prove that $\mu _{a}^{2}\in L^{2}$ (or $\mu _{a}^{3}\in L^{2}$ if $p=q$).