Equidistribution in supersingular Hecke orbits (Q1683966)

The paper under review is a new chapter in the study of equidistribution properties of special points on Shimura varieties. This is a question which has been studied in several different settings and from several different perspectives. Most work on the subject has focused on equidistribution in characteristic zero. This paper concerns the more recent topic of equidistribution of Hecke orbits modulo \(p\). Since Hecke operators will preserve the Newton stratification, one is interested in equidistribution within a stratum. The first case is that of modular curves, which was studied by \textit{R. Menares} [Proc. Am. Math. Soc. 140, No. 8, 2687--2691 (2012; Zbl 1329.11036)]. He shows equidistribution properties of the action of Hecke operators on the set of supersingular points. In this paper, the author considers a certain class of higher dimensional PEL Shimura variety introduced by Kottwitz. He then observes that the problem of understanding the action of Hecke operators on the space of functions on the basic stratum can be subsumed into the broader problem of understanding the action of Hecke operators on the étale cohomology of the basic stratum of a Shimura variety. In [Math. Ann. 356, No. 2, 487--518 (2013; Zbl 1303.14034)], the author characterised this action in terms of automorphic forms, generalising a trace formula of Kottwitz. The main result of the paper under review is that this trace formula can be used to prove equidistribution results about the Hecke action on the basic stratum.