Bounding sup-norms of cusp forms of large level (Q849253)

The present paper gives the first non-trivial bound for the sup-norm of cusp forms in the level aspect and has paved the way to active research and further improvements in the topic. Let \(f\) be a weight zero Hecke-Maaß cusp form of square-free level \(N\), character \(\chi\) and Laplacian eigenvalue \(\lambda\geq 1/4\), such that \(\|f\|_2=1\) with respect to \(dxdy/y^2\). It is shown that \(\|f\|_\infty\ll_\lambda N^{-1/37}\), from which also the hybrid bound \(\|f\|_\infty\ll \lambda^{1/4}(N\lambda)^{-\delta}\) (for a specific \(\delta>0\)) is derived. The first bound holds also for \(f=y^{k/2}F\) where \(F\) is a holomorphic cusp form of weight \(k\) with the implied constant now depending on \(k\); furthermore, the \(N\)-bound implies the first non-trivial bound for any \(L^p\)-norm. For the proof the values of \(z\) are restricted by Atkin-Lehner theory, from where the requirement \(N\) to be square-free. The novel idea used is to apply the amplification method into the setting of the circle method. When \(x\) is approximable by rational points with small denominator a Voronoi-type argument is used for a non-trivial estimate. For the rest of \(x\) a certain amplified second moment is introduced and via trace formulae and solving a delicate counting problem depending on the Diophantine properties of \(z\) the authors achieve a good estimate for \(f(z)\).