Unitary cycles on Shimura curves and the Shimura lift. I (Q2437876)

The topic of this paper are certain divisors on integral models of Shimura curves and unitary Shimura varieties. The context of the paper is the Kudla program whose general goal is to relate certain generating series obtained from intersection numbers of cycles on Shimura varieties to modular forms, vastly generalizing the work of Hirzebruch and Zagier on such intersection numbers on Hilbert modular surfaces. In [KRY] [\textit{S. S. Kudla} et al., Modular forms and special cycles on Shimura curves. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (2006; Zbl 1157.11027)] Kudla, Rapoport and Yang study arithmetic divisors, i.e., elements in the first arithmetic Chow group, on integral models of Shimura curves, and show that the generating series one obtains in this setting is a modular form of weight \(3/2\). The goal of the paper at hand and of its sequel [\textit{S. Sankaran}, Compos. Math. 150, No. 12, 1963--2002 (2014; Zbl 1343.11059)] is to show that the Shimura lift of this modular form can again be seen as a generating series arising from cycles on Shimura varieties, namely from ``unitary cycles'', i.e., arithmetic cycles on certain unitary Shimura varieties. The Shimura lift is a classical operation on modular forms. In the present paper, the focus is on the geometry of the two families of divisors; the aspects of equipping them with Green functions and passing to the arithmetic setting are treated in the second paper. To prove the theorem, the author applies the \(p\)-adic uniformization theorem in order to eventually reduce the question to a ``local'' question, i.e., an analogous question in the setting of moduli spaces of \(p\)-divisible groups (Rapoport-Zink spaces). More precisely in the situation at hand one has to study cycles on the formal model of the Drinfeld upper half-space. Building on previous work of Kudla and Rapoport and using Grothendieck-Messing theory, he is able to obtain explicit equations for local unitary cycles, and hence a precise description of their irreducible components. Comparing this explicit description to the analogous description on the Shimura curve side which was obtained by Kudla, Rapoport and Yang, the local versions of the divisors can be related to each other.