Existence and Weyl's law for spherical cusp forms (Q879617)

The asymptotics for the number of the Laplacian eigenvalues for compact manifolds was proved by Weyl. For a noncompact manifold of finite volume, it is expected that similar results hold for the number of discrete spectra of the Laplacian. The work of \textit{R. Phillip} and \textit{P. Sarnak} [J. Anal. Math. 59, 179--187 (1992; Zbl 0809.30035)] indicates this for a special case. On the other hand, \textit{A. Selberg} [J. Indian Math. Soc., n. Ser. 20, 47--87 (1956; Zbl 0072.08201)] has shown this for the quotient space of the upper half plane by a congruence subgroup of \(\text{PGL}(2,\mathbb Z)\). It has been conjectured by \textit{P. Sarnak} [Isr. Math. Conf. Proc. 3, 237--250 (1990; Zbl 0707.11040)] that the same holds in the general setting of congruence quotients of noncompact symmetric spaces. In his thesis, \textit{S. D. Miller} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 533, 127--169 (2001; Zbl 0996.11040)] established this conjecture for \(G= \text{PGL}(3)\). More recently, \textit{W. Müller} [C. R. Math. Acad. Sci. Paris 338, No. 5, 347--352 (2004; Zbl 1062.11028)] has established this conjecture for \(\text{PGL}(n)\). For a general split adjoint semisimple group, the asymptotics for the number of cusp forms with Laplacian eigenvalues was proved by \textit{H. Donnelly} [J. Differ. Geom. 17, 239--253 (1982; Zbl 0494.58029)]. The works of Selberg, Miller, and Müller rely essentially on the theory of Eisenstein series. In this paper, the authors give a simple proof of the Wey law for cusp forms, valid for any split adjoint group \(G\) over \(Q\).