Spectrum of the Laplacian on a sphere (${\lambda }_{\ell }=\ell (\ell +d-1)$)

For the unit $S^d$ and the nonnegative Laplace-Beltrami operator, the eigenvalues are $\ell (\ell +d-1)$, with multiplicities $\left(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{\ell +d}{d}\right)-\left(\genfrac{}{}{0ex}{}{\ell +d-2}{d}\right)$ for $\ell \ge 0$. The eigenfunctions are restrictions of degree-$\ell$ harmonic polynomials. The harmonic decomposition of homogeneous polynomials and the Stone-Weierstrass theorem prove completeness.

For a smooth ambient function near the unit sphere, the chain rule along the great circles ${\gamma }_i(t)=p\cos t+e_i\sin t$ gives $(F\circ {\gamma }_i{)}^{\prime \prime }(0)=D^{2}F(e_i,e_i)-DF(p)$. Sum over an orthonormal basis of the tangent space and supplement it by the radial vector $p$. The geodesic trace formula for the Laplace-Beltrami operator then gives the displayed formula, evaluated at radius one. In particular a degree-$\ell$ harmonic polynomial restricts to a spherical harmonic with positive eigenvalue $\ell (\ell +d-1)$.