Radial Schur multipliers on trees and the failure of Fourier-Schur transference

Given $1<p<\mathrm{\infty }$ and a function $m\text{\hspace{0.17em}⁣}:{\mathbf{N}}_0\to \mathbf{C}$, we provide a characterization of radial Schur multipliers $M(x,y)=m(d(x,y))$ on the Schatten $p$-class of a tree $(X,d)$ equipped with its graph metric. That is, the operator norm of the radial Schur multiplier $S_M$ is controlled by the norm of the Fourier multiplier $T_m$ on the torus: $$\parallel S_M\text{\hspace{0.17em}⁣}:S_p(X)\to S_p(X){\parallel }_{\mathrm{c}\mathrm{b}}\lesssim \frac{p^4}{(p-1{)}^2}\parallel T_m\text{\hspace{0.17em}⁣}:L_p(\mathbf{T})\to L_p(\mathbf{T}){\parallel }_{\mathrm{c}\mathrm{b}},$$ with both quantities being comparable when the tree $X$ has infinite diameter. This is a rather unexpected inequality, which necessarily fails at the endpoints $p=1,\mathrm{\infty }$ due to the work of Haagerup, Steenstrup and Szwarc. As an application, we construct the first examples of completely $S_p$-bounded Herz-Schur multipliers in the free group that are unbounded as Fourier multipliers. This result disproves Fourier-Schur transference—a longstanding open problem since the work of Neuwirth and Ricard in 2011. In line with this, our main result also implies the surprising fact that free balls Schur multipliers are uniformly $S_p$-bounded, in sharp contrast to their Fourier behavior. In addition, we disprove Fourier-Schur transference over the algebraic groups ${\mathrm{P}\mathrm{G}\mathrm{L}}_2({\mathbf{Q}}_q)$ and ${\mathrm{P}\mathrm{S}\mathrm{L}}_2(\mathbf{R})$ with $\mathrm{K}$-biinvariant counterexamples, the latter involving additional geometric and probabilistic techniques.