The character of \(\mathrm{GL}(2)\) automorphic forms (Q897573)

In order to apply the Arthur-Selberg trace formula to study automorphic representations, it is important to have test functions which isolate the representations in question. In the paper under review, the author decomposes cuspidal automorphic representations of \(\mathrm{GL}(2)\) into finite subsets by defining a notion of cuspidal data. For each cuspidal datum \(\mathcal{X}\), he constructs a test function \(\phi\) such that the trace of \(\pi_0(\phi)\), the right regular representation on the cuspidal automorphic spectrum, picks out the representations \(\pi\) indexed by \(\mathcal{X}\). Furthermore, the Hecke and Casimir eigenvalues of \(\pi\) can be read off explicitly from this trace.