English

Radial Integration in Continuous Dimension: A Mellin-Gamma Classification of Euclidean Ball Volume

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2026-05-07 v1 Functional Analysis

Abstract

We classify positive linear functionals on Cc(R>0)C_c(\mathbb{R}_{>0}) satisfying scaling covariance of degree x/2x/2 and Gaussian normalization to πx/2\pi^{x/2}. We prove that the unique such functionals are represented by the Mellin--Gamma measures dμx(u)=πx/2Γ(x/2)ux/21du,x>0. d\mu_x(u) = \frac{\pi^{x/2}}{\Gamma(x/2)}\, u^{x/2 - 1}\, du, \quad x > 0. The result is a rigidity statement: the Mellin--Gamma structure is forced by the axioms, without assuming analytic continuation, special functions, or a priori formulas. The proof reduces the scaling condition, via a logarithmic change of variables, to translation invariance on R\mathbb{R}, where Haar measure uniqueness determines the measure up to normalization, which is fixed by the Gaussian integral. As a consequence, the Euclidean ball volume formula V(x)=πx/2Γ(x/2+1) V(x) = \frac{\pi^{x/2}}{\Gamma(x/2 + 1)} is recovered as the mass of the unit interval. We further analyze the induced dimension-shift structure, identifying two multiplicative cocycles whose ratio is a coboundary given by the dimension function xx, and give an independent characterization via a shifted Bohr--Mollerup theorem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2605.04351,
  title  = {Radial Integration in Continuous Dimension: A Mellin-Gamma Classification of Euclidean Ball Volume},
  author = {Andreu Ballus Santacana},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2605.04351},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

15 pages