Asymptotic trace formula for the Hecke operators

TL;DR

This paper derives explicit asymptotic formulas with optimal error bounds for trace formulas involving Hecke operators on spaces of modular forms, revealing large trace phenomena that challenge quantum chaos predictions.

Contribution

It provides new explicit trace formulas with optimal error terms and demonstrates large trace behavior contradicting quantum chaos expectations.

Findings

Explicit trace formulas with square root cancelation error terms.

Identification of unusually large traces in certain ranges.

Counterexamples to quantum chaos predictions for Hecke operators.

Abstract

Given integers $m$, $n$ and $k$, we give an explicit formula with an optimal error term (with square root cancelation) for the Petersson trace formula involving the $m$-th and $n$-th Fourier coefficients of an orthonormal basis of $S_k(N)^*$ (the weight $k$ newforms with fixed square-free level $N$) provided that $|4 \pi \sqrt{mn}- k|=o(k^{\frac{1}{3}})$. Moreover, we establish an explicit formula with a power saving error term for the trace of the Hecke operator $\mathcal{T}_n^*$ on $S_k(N)^*$ averaged over $k$ in a short interval. By bounding the second moment of the trace of $\mathcal{T}_{n}$ over a larger interval, we show that the trace of $\mathcal{T}_n$ is unusually large in the range $|4 \pi \sqrt{n}- k| = o(n^{\frac{1}{6}})$. As an application, for any fixed prime $p$ with $\gcd(p,N)=1$, we show that there exists a sequence $\{k_n\}$ of weights such that the error term of Weyl's law for $\mathcal{T}_p$ is unusually large and violates the prediction of arithmetic quantum chaos. In particular, this generalizes the result of Gamburd, Jakobson and Sarnak~\cite[Theorem 1.4]{Gamburd} with an improved exponent.