Continuous wavelets on compact manifolds

Let M be a smooth compact oriented Riemannian manifold, and let Δ _M be the Laplace–Beltrami operator on M. Say \({0 \neq f \in \mathcal{S}(\mathbb {R}^+)}\) , and that f (0)  =  0. For t  >  0, let K _t (x, y) denote the kernel of f (t ² Δ _M ). We show that K _t is well-localized near the diagonal, in the sense that it satisfies estimates akin to those satisfied by the kernel of the convolution operator f (t ²Δ) on \({\mathbb {R}^n}\) . We define continuous \({\mathcal {S}}\)-wavelets on M, in such a manner that K _t (x, y) satisfies this definition, because of its localization near the diagonal. Continuous \({\mathcal {S}}\)-wavelets on M are analogous to continuous wavelets on \({\mathbb {R}^n}\) in \({\mathcal {S}}\) (\({\mathbb {R}^n}\)). In particular, we are able to characterize the Hölder continuous functions on M by the size of their continuous \({\mathcal {S}}\)-wavelet transforms, for Hölder exponents strictly between 0 and 1. If M is the torus \({\mathbb T^2}\) or the sphere S ², and f (s)  =  se ^?s (the “Mexican hat” situation), we obtain two explicit approximate formulas for K _t , one to be used when t is large, and one to be used when t is small.