Unitarity and functoriality (Q1901996)

One of the fundamental ideas of Langlands was that it is possible to associate to any algebraic group over a global field a complex group (\(L\)-group) such that a homomorphism between \(L\)-groups induces a map of automorphic representations. These also exist at the local level. The question which is investigated in this paper is how the property of unitary behaves under such maps. The first result shows that if a representation is unitary and one of its unramified components is tempered then its image will again be unitary. This result brings the question into association with the Ramanujan conjecture. The authors show how, in the case of general linear groups, the question can be `reduced' to the cuspidal case. They give an example of a unitary representation of \(\text{SO} (3)\times \text{SO} (3)\) and a map to SO(5) so that the image is not unitary. The authors then formulate three conjectures which would describe the phenomena generally and which also give, according to the authors, the correct generalization of the Ramanujan conjecture for arbitrary groups.