On the rapid decay of cuspidal automorphic forms (Q452053)

The rapid decay property of automorphic forms plays a crucial role in the analytic study of their associated \(L\)-functions. A classical result is that \(K\)-finite cuspidal automorphic forms decay rapidly on Siegel sets, but for some applications (such as the study of exterior square \(L\)-functions) it is necessary to consider more general situations. In spite of a number of implicit claims (without supplying details), there seemed to be no precise statements and uniform proofs to establish the rapid decay property in its full generality. In this paper, the authors relaxed both the \(K\)-finite condition and the Siegel set condition above, and showed that every smooth cuspidal automorphic form has rapid decay along certain sets much larger than Siegel sets. The proof employs the theory of automorphic distributions developed by the authors in a series of papers [Ann. Math. (2) 164, No. 2, 423--488 (2006; Zbl 1162.11341); Prog. Math. 255, 111--150 (2008; Zbl 1124.11004))], and the result here in turn provides the analytic basis for the authors' general approach of using automorphic distributions to study the holomorphy of Langlands \(L\)-functions. In particular, it has been applied to prove the convergence of a general family of Rankin-Selberg integrals, and to give new constructions and analytic continuations of exterior square \(L\)-functions on \(\mathrm{GL}(n)\) [J. Am. Math. Soc. 25, No. 2, 465--506 (2012; Zbl 1292.11062)].