On liftings and cusp cohomology of arithmetic groups (Q1068124)

This paper confronts the difficult problem of determining the cuspidal part of the cohomology of an arithmetic group. The object here is to show that for certain algebraic number fields E with ring of integers \({\mathcal O}_ E\) there exist congruence subgroups of \(SL_ 2({\mathcal O}_ E)\) and \(SL_ 3({\mathcal O}_ E)\) with non-vanishing cuspidal cohomology. The condition on E is arithmetic and quite weak. The construction used here is based on Langlands functorality and employs both the Saito-Shintani- Langlands theory of base change for \(GL_ 2\) and the Gelbart-Jacquet lift from \(GL_ 2\) to \(GL_ 3\). The proof also uses a version of the Selberg trace formula and several other related interesting techniques.