An analogue of Weil's converse theorem for harmonic Maass forms of polynomial growth (Q2145884)

This paper describes \(L\)-functions for special harmonic Maass forms. The theory of harmonic Maass forms has been an active subject with many applications throughout number theory, combinatorics, and physics over the past 20 years. However, it does not yet have full descriptions of some of the key analogues of classical automorphic forms theory. For instance, most harmonic Maass forms have exponential growth at the cusps (with the same growth rate as weakly holomorphic modular forms). This exponential growth is important for many of the applications (and is often natural or required from physics points of views), but it makes constructions like \(L\)-functions as integrals with analytic continuation and functional equations more challenging. The first breakthrough result in defining \(L\)-functions for forms with this kind of growth was due to Bringmann, Fricke, and Kent, who defined \(L\)-functions for weakly holomorphic modular forms. This provided surprising structure relating periods to ratios of non-critical \(L\)-values, and shed light on generalized Eichler-Shimura theory. However, it did not allow for a Weil-type Converse Theorem, because the shape of the \(L\)-functions' definitions which cleverly fixes convergence is ``automatically'' symmetric under \(s\mapsto k-s\). In this paper, the authors take a different direction by describing \(L\)-functions for special harmonic Maass forms which do not have exponential growth. They further provide a family of examples of such functions, which are the harmonic Maass form ``lifts'' of classical Eisenstein series. This allows them to define de-symmetrized \(L\)-functions, which in these cases, do satisfy a Weil-type Converse Theorem. Pushing the field of harmonic Maass forms into such directions brings it closer to the tools which are essential in the study of classical modular forms and Maass waveforms, and is a first step in helping to bridge this gap.