Singular spherical maximal operators on a class of two step nilpotent lie groups

LetH ⁿ ≅ℝ²ⁿ ⋉ℝ be the Heisenberg group and letμ _t be the normalized surface measure for the sphere of radiust in ℝ²ⁿ . Consider the maximal function defined byM f=sup _t>0|f*μ _t |. We prove forn≥2 thatM defines an operator bounded onL ^p (H ⁿ ) provided thatp>2n/(2n−1). This improves an earlier result by Nevo and Thangavelu, and the range forL ^p boundedness is optimal. We also extend the result to a more general class of surfaces and to groups satisfying a nondegeneracy condition; these include the groups of Heisenberg type. The second author was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.