Why is the pushforward of Haar on $SU(2)$ by trace the semicircle measure

haar-measurelie-groupsvolume

This is something which has been bugging me since I keep getting the wrong answer: that the pushforward measure should be the "square of the semicircle" rather than the semicircle measure.

My reasoning is as follows:

$SU(2)$ preserves the usual volume form $dz_1 \wedge dz_2 \wedge dz_3 \wedge dz_4$ on $\mathbb{C}^2$, and so the Haar measure on $SU(2)$ is the induced measure on $S^3$ of this euclidean measure. Now, trace is the map that takes the matrix $\begin{pmatrix} x_1 + i x_2 & -y_1 + iy_2 \\ y_1 + iy_2 & x_1 – ix_2 \end{pmatrix}$ to $2x_1$.

Thus, if we let $f$ be the density of the pushforward measure by trace, then $f$ should be proportional to the 2 dimensional volume:

\begin{equation*}
\begin{split}
f(t) &= \frac{1}{N} Vol \{ \begin{pmatrix} x_1 + i x_2 & -y_1 + iy_2 \\ y_1 + iy_2 & x_1 – ix_2 \end{pmatrix} \in SU(2) \textrm{ | } x_1 = \frac{t}{2} \} \\
&= \frac{1}{N} Vol \{(x_1,x_2,y_1,y_2) \in S^3 \textrm{ | } x_1 = \frac{t}{2} \} \\
&= \frac{1}{N} Vol\{(x_2,y_1,y_2) \textrm{ | } x_2^2 + y_1^2 + y_2^2 = 1-\frac{t^2}{4}\} \\
&= \frac{1}{N} 4 \pi (1-\frac{t^2}{4}) \\
&= \frac{\pi}{N} (4-t^2)
\end{split}
\end{equation*}

Now, the actual answer that we should be getting is that $f(t) = \frac{1}{2\pi} \sqrt{4-t^2}$, and as you can see, we are off by a square root. Why are we wrong? I cannot see a mistake!

Some references: https://mathoverflow.net/questions/101587/sato-tate-measure-for-gl3-automorphic-forms and https://arxiv.org/pdf/1604.01256.pdf page 11 might be helpful.

Thank you in advance,

Maithreya

Best Answer

I realized that the mistake is in the line "then 𝑓 should be proportional to the 2 dimensional volume". This is a tempting statement since we might naively believe that the level cylinder set should give us the density but it is blatantly false. In order to see this, look at an easier and clearer problem: just try to compute the volume of the 2 sphere assuming the analogous (false) statement and one will get the wrong answer of $\pi^2$ rather than the correct answer of $4 \pi$.

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