Invariant measures for the continual Cartan subgroup

We construct and study the one-parameter semigroup of σ-finite measures Lθ , θ > 0, on the space of Schwartz distributions that have an infinite-dimensional abelian group of linear symmetries; this group is a continual analog of the classical Cartan subgroup of diagonal positive matrices of the group SL(n,R). The parameter θ is the degree of homogeneity with respect to homotheties of the space, we prove uniqueness theorem for measures with given degree of homogeneity, and call the measure with degree of homogeneity equal to one the infinite-dimensional Lebesgue measure L. The structure of these measures is very closely related to the so-called Poisson–Dirichlet measures PD(θ), and to the well-known gamma process. The nontrivial properties of the Lebesgue measure are related to the superstructure of the measure PD(1), which is called the conic Poisson–Dirichlet measure—CPD. This is the most interesting σ-finite measure on the set of positive convergent monotonic real series. © 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.