The Langlands classification and irreducible characters for real reductive groups (Q1189557)

This book explores the geometry of the local Langlands conjecture parametrizing the irreducible representations of a reductive algebraic group (over a local field) in terms of the complex dual group and the Weil-Deligne group. For \(p\)-adic fields, this conjecture has not been proved, but is has been refined to a detailed collection of (conjectural) relationships between \(p\)-adic representation theory and geometry on the space of \(p\)-adic Langlands parameters; cf. the work of \textit{D. Kazhdan} and \textit{G. Lusztig} [Invent. Math. 87, 153-215 (1987; Zbl 0613.22004)]. In the case of real groups, the predicted parametrization of representations was proved by Langlands himself; however, most of the deeper relations suggested by \(p\)-adic theory (between real representation theory and geometry on the space of real Langlands parameters) no longer hold. The purpose of this book is to redefine the space of real Langlands parameters so as to recover these relationships, i.e., to ``do Kazhdan-Lusztig theory on the dual group.'' A biproduct of the authors' exposition here is an introduction to many of the important modern geometric notions and methods in representation theory, including Kazhdan-Lusztig polynomials, equivariant perverse sheaves, characteristic cycles, etc. A listing of the books' chapter headings now follows: 1) Introduction; 2) Structure theory: real forms; 3) Structure theory: extended groups and Whittaker models; 4) Structure theory: \(L\)-groups; 5) Langlands parameters and \(L\)-homomorphisms; 6) Geometric parameters; 7) Complete geometric parameters and perverse sheaves; 8) Perverse sheaves on the geometric parameter space; 9) The Langlands classification for tori; 10) Covering groups and projective representations; 11) The Langlands classification without \(L\)-groups; 12) Langlands parameters and Cartan subgroups; 13)-14) Pairings between Cartan subgroups and some proofs; 15) Multiplicity formulas for representations; 16) The translation principle and the Kazhdan-Lusztig algorithm; 17)-18) Strongly stable characters, and more proofs; 19) Characteristic cycles and micropackets; 20) Characteristic cycles and Harish-Chandra modules; 21) The classification theorem and Harish-Chandra modules for the dual group; 22) Arthur parameters; 23) Local geometry of constructible sheaves; 24) Microlocal geometry of perverse sheaves; 25) A fixed point formula; 26) Endoscopic lifting; and 27) Special unipotent representations. Hopefully, this listing makes abundantly clear the interest this work should have for all graduate students and researchers in representation theory and/or automorphic forms. (More recently, the third author has also written a briefer outline of this reformulation of Langlands' conjectures, covering the \(p\)-adic as well as archimedean theory; entitled ``The Local Langlands Conjecture'', this 1992 preprint packs an amazing number of beautiful ideas into 55 well-written pages).