Parabolic Whittaker functions and topological field theories. I. (Q412794)

The paper under review puts forward a proposal to study Archimedean Langlands duality using mirror symmetry in \(2\)-dimensional topological quantum field theory (TQFT). Archimedean Langlands duality relates ``arithmetic'' and ``automorphic'' constructions of Whittaker functions. Its archetype is the Sintani-Casselman-Shalika (SCS) formula, a basic result in the theory of automorphic forms and in number theory that expresses values of spherical \(p\)-adic Whittaker functions on a reductive algebraic group as characters of finite dimensional irreducible representations of the Langlands dual group evaluated at the Langlands parameter conjugacy class. In previous work, the authors established a \(2\)-dimensional TQFT framework for studying Archimedean Langlands duality for local \(L\)-factors [\textit{A. Gerasimov}, \textit{D. Lebedev} and \textit{S. Oblezin}, Commun. Number Theory Phys. 5, No. 1, 57--100 (2011; Zbl 1251.14011); ibid., 101--134 (2011; Zbl 1251.14012)]. To apply this framework in the more general setting of Whittaker functions, the paper under review begins by introducing parabolic Whittaker functions associated to a parabolic subgroup \(P\subset GL_{l+m}(\mathbb{C})\). Similar to \(\mathrm{gl}_{l+m}\)-Whittaker functions, parabolic Whittaker functions are common eigenvalues of a certain family of mutually commuting differential operators. The authors conjecture, and prove for \(m=1\), that parabolic Whittaker functions associated to \(P_{m,l+m}\) (the parabolic subgroup of \(GL_{l+m}(\mathbb{C})\) with Levi factor \(GL_m(\mathbb{C})\times GL_l(\mathbb{C})\)) describe equivariant Gromov-Witten invariants of the Grassmanian \(Gr(m,l+m)=GL_{l+1}(\mathbb{C})/P_{m,l+m}\) thus generalizing a description due to Givental of \(S^1\times U_{l+1}\)-equivariant Gromov-Witten invariants of complete flag spaces. When \(P\) is maximal parabolic (i.e., when \(GL_{l+1}/P =\mathbb{P}^l\)), \(2\)-dimensional TQFT on a disk is invoked, and both an ``arithmetic'' and an ``automorphic'' representation of the parabolic Whittaker functions are obtained, heuristically relating to one another by mirror symmetry. Thus mirror symmetry is seen to imply Archimedean Langlands duality for certain parabolic Whittaker functions, supporting the idea that Archimedean Langlands duality in general might perhaps be a special case of mirror symmetry.