On counting twists of a character appearing in its associated Weil representation (Q353962)

Let \(F\) be a nonarchimedean local field of characteristic different from two and \(K\) a separable quadratic extension. Denote by \(\text{GL}(2,F)^+\) the subgroup of \(\text{GL}(2,F)\) of index two consisting of matrices whose determinant is in \(N_{K/F}(K^\times)\). Then \(K^\times\) embeds in \(\text{GL}(2,F)^+\). Let \(\theta\) be a character of \(K^\times\) that does not factor through \(N_{K/F}\) and let \(r_\theta\) be the Weil representation of \(\text{GL}(2,F)\) attached to \(\theta\). \textit{D. Prasad} proved in [Compos. Math. 94, No. 1, 19--28 (1994; Zbl 0824.11035)] that the restriction of \(r_\theta\) to \(\text{GL}(2,F)^+\) breaks up as a sum of two irreducible representations \(r_{\theta_+}\) and \(r_{\theta_-}\). Moreover, a character \(\chi\) of \(K^\times\) with \((\chi\cdot\theta^{-1})| _{F^\times}=\omega_{K/F}\) occurs in \(r_{\theta_+}\) if and only if \(\varepsilon(\theta\chi^{-1},\psi_0)=\varepsilon(\overline\theta\chi^{-1},\psi_0)=1\) and in \(r_{\theta_-}\) if and only if both of the epsilon factors are \(-1\). This paper is devoted to counting at each conductor level the number of characters \(\chi\) that appear in \(r_{\theta_+}\) or \(r_{\theta_-}\). The proof is based on computations of the \(\varepsilon\)-factors of characters.