Counting locally supercuspidal newforms

DOI10.2140/ENT.2025.4.349MaRDI QIDQ6937283zbMATH OpenFDO

Publication date 27 August 2025

Published in Essential Number Theory (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://doi.org/10.2140/ENT.2025.4.349

automorphic forms modular forms supercuspidal representations trace formula

Holomorphic modular forms of integral weight (11F11) Automorphic forms on (mbox{GL}(2)); Hilbert and Hilbert-Siegel modular groups and their modular and automorphic forms; Hilbert modular surfaces (11F41) Representation-theoretic methods; automorphic representations over local and global fields (11F70) Spectral theory; trace formulas (e.g., that of Selberg) (11F72)

Review text

The Eichler-Selberg trace formula provides an explicit formula for the trace of a Hecke operator \(T_n\) acting on a space of cuspidal modular forms \(S_k(N,\psi)\). Later this was reproved with adelically by interpreting the trace of \(T_n\) as the trace of an operator \(R(\phi)\) on a space of automorphic forms for a suitable test function \(\phi = \otimes \phi_v\). When the nebentypus \(\psi\) is trivial and \(p\) is a finite place, one can take \(\phi_p\) to be the characteristic function of a suitable compact open subgroup \(K_p(N)\) of \(\mathrm{GL}_2(\mathbb Q_p)\) to pick out the \(p\)-part of the global level \(N\). Computing the trace of \(R(\phi)\) reduces to determining the finite collection of global orbital integrals that contribute and computing the corresponding local orbital integral.\N\NThe present paper aims to compute traces of Hecke operators on subspaces of \(S_k(N,\psi)\) with given local ramified components of sufficiently nice type. Namely, suppose \(N = S^2 T^3\) where \(S, T\) are squarefree coprime integers, and for each \(p \mid N\) fix a supercuspidal representation \(\sigma_p\) of conductor exponent \(v_p(N)\). In other words, \(\sigma_p\) is a depth 0 supercuspidal if \(p \mid S\) and a simple supercuspidal if \(p \mid T\). Let \(S_k(\hat \sigma)\) be the subspace of \(S_k(N,\psi)\) with local component \(\sigma_p\) for each \(p \mid N\). We remark that when \(\psi\) is trivial, every minimal newform \(f \in S_k(N,\psi)\) lies in a unique \(S_k(\hat \sigma)\).\N\NTheorem 1.1 gives a (rather involved) formula for the trace of \(T_n\) on \(S_k(\hat \sigma)\) assuming \((n,N) = 1\) and \(k > 2\). This is achieved by computing the adelic trace formula using test functions \(\phi\) such that \(\phi_p\) is the matrix coefficient of \(\sigma_p\) for \(p \mid N\). The main technical hurdle is to compute the local elliptic orbital integrals for such \(\phi_p\). The reason to exclude \(k=2\) is to avoid convergence issues.\N\NTheorems 1.2 and 1.3 specialize to this formula to cases where \(n=1\), \(\psi = 1\), and either \(S=1\) or \(T=1\). In this case, the trace formula computes \(\dim S_k(\hat \sigma)\). These formulas turn out to be rather simple, and refine various existing dimension formulas. Some connections are made with biases of root numbers. We remark that asymptotic dimension formulas (i.e., the main term in the trace formula) were already known, so the novel aspect is an explicit computation of the secondary terms, which is considerably harder. One can view the secondary terms as a bias toward certain local components in \(S_k(N,\psi)\).\N\NThe author emphasizes that the main value of the paper is in the methodology, which in principle should apply to more general situations. The paper is well written and should be a useful reference to researchers interested in explicit trace formulas.\N\N\textit{Remark:} A subsequent joint paper with the reviewer [\textit{A. Knightly} and \textit{K. Martin}, ``Counting newforms with prescribed ramified supercuspidal components, Preprint, \url{arXiv:2511.14587}] extends Theorem 1.2 to allow for supercuspidal components of arbitrary odd conductor.

Cites work

Cited in

(1)

A generalized \(\operatorname{PGL}(2)\) Petersson/Bruggeman-Kuznetsov formula for analytic applications

This page was built for publication: Counting locally supercuspidal newforms

Report a bug (only for logged in users!)Click here to report a bug for this page (MaRDI item Q6937283)