Unitary periods, Hermitian forms and points on flag varieties (Q2458860)

The authors study certain representation numbers associated to Hermitian forms over an imaginary quadratic field \(E\) of class number one. They take a standard parabolic subgroup \(P\) of type \((n_1,\ldots,n_t)\) of \(\text{GL}_n(E)\) and consider the Dirichlet series for a Hermitian form \(x\): \[ Z_P(x ; s_1, \ldots,s_{t-1}) = w_E^{-(t-1)} \sum_{\substack{ k_i \geq 0\\ 1\leq i\leq t-1}} \frac{r_P(x; k_1, \ldots, k_{t-1})}{k_1^{s_1} \cdots k_{t-1}^{s_{t-1}}} \] and its weighted average \(Z_P(\text{gen}(x); s_1, \ldots,k_{t-1})\) on genus class of \(x\), where \(r_P(x; k_1, \ldots, k_{t-1})\) are certain representation numbers of the Hermitian form \(x\). Convergence and meromorphic continuation of \(Z_P(x ; s)\) comes from a close relation to certain Eisenstein series \(E_P^+(x; s)\). As a main result, they formulate an expression of \(Z_P(\text{gen}(x);s)\) in general, and give some explicit examples for special cases; \(P\) of type \((n-1,n), \; (1,n-2,1)\), and \(P\) is Borel and \(n = 4\).