Some remarks on the critical values of Rankin-Selberg \(L\)-series (Q2162808)

It is a fundamental problem to understand the special values of zeta functions associated to automorphic forms, which capture deep arithmetic information. Among various types of zeta functions, the Rankin-Selberg \(L\)-series is one of the most basic and important zeta functions, whose critical values have been studied in detail in [\textit{G. Shimura}, Commun. Pure Appl. Math. 29, 783--804 (1976; Zbl 0348.10015)] for two modular forms of different weights for \(\Gamma_{1}(N)\subset \mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z})\). In the paper under review, the author provides an explicit formula for the critical values of the Rankin-Selberg \(L\)-series \(D(s,f\otimes g)\) associated to a pair of modular forms \((f,g)\) of different weights for \(\Gamma_0(N)\subset \mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z})\). As an application, the author also proves that a cusp form \(g\) can be uniquely determined by certain critical values of a family of Rankin-Selberg \(L\)-series \(D(s,f\otimes g)\) by varying \(f\), which improves an earlier result in [\textit{D. Lanphier}, Int. J. Number Theory 15, No. 7, 1403--1412 (2019; Zbl 1456.11056)].