A note on cusp forms and representations of \(\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{F}_\mathrm{p})\) (Q2657653)

Let \(p\) be a prime, and \(\Gamma(p) := \operatorname{Ker}(\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z}) \rightarrow \mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{F}_p))\) be the principal congruence subgroup. The cusp forms of weight \(k\) for \(\Gamma(p)\) constitute a finite dimensional linear space over \(\mathbb{C}\), denoted by \(S_k(\Gamma(p))\). The paper is concerned with the case \(k=2\), when \(S_2(\Gamma(p))\) is acted on by \(\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{F}_p)\) in a natural way. Let \(\overline{S_2(\Gamma(p))}\) be the dual space of \(S_2(\Gamma(p))\). Denote by \(S_{2,p}\) the character of \(S_2(\Gamma(p)) + \overline{S_2(\Gamma(p))}\). In this paper, it is shown that the character \(S_{2,p}\) of \(\mathrm{SL}_2(\mathbb{F}_p)\) is a sum of Deligne-Lusztig characters with coefficients which are linear polynomials in \(p\) and depend only on the residue of \(p\) modulo 12 (Theorem 2.1). Furthermore, these coefficients imply that that the simple space \(S_2(\Gamma(p))\) usually does not admit such a decomposition, and that every non-trivial irreducible character of \(\mathrm{PSL}_2(\mathbb{F}_p))\) is a summand of \(S_{2,p}\) when \(p\) is big enough (Corollary 2.6 and Corollary 2.8).