The Positive Maximum Principle on Symmetric Spaces

Abstract

We investigate the Courr\`{e}ge theorem in the context of linear operators $A$ that satisfy the positive maximum principle on a space of continuous functions over a symmetric space. Applications are given to Feller--Markov processes. We also introduce Gangolli operators, which satisfy the positive maximum principle, and generalise the form associated with the generator of a L\'{e}vy process on a symmetric space. When the space is compact, we show that Gangolli operators are pseudo--differential operators having scalar symbols.