Spherical varieties, functoriality, and quantization

TL;DR

This paper explores the extension of the Langlands program to spherical varieties and their quantizations, proposing a functoriality framework via dual groups and geometric quantization of cotangent stacks.

Contribution

It generalizes Langlands' functoriality to spherical varieties and links transfer operators to geometric quantization of cotangent stacks.

Findings

Dual groups associated to spherical varieties encode spectral data.

Functoriality is formulated as morphisms between dual groups.

Transfer operators correspond to changes in geometric quantization.

Abstract

We discuss generalizations of the Langlands program, from reductive groups to the local and automorphic spectra of spherical varieties, and to more general representations arising as "quantizations" of suitable Hamiltonian spaces. To a spherical $G$-variety $X$, one associates a dual group ${^LG_X}$ and an $L$-value (encoded in a representation of ${^LG_X}$), which conjecturally describe the local and automorphic spectra of the variety. This sets up a problem of functoriality, for any morphism ${^LG_X}\to {^LG_Y}$ of dual groups. We review, and generalize, Langlands' "beyond endoscopy" approach to this problem. Then, we describe the cotangent bundles of quotient stacks of the relative trace formula, and show that transfer operators of functoriality between relative trace formulas in rank 1 can be interpreted as a change of "geometric quantization" for these cotangent stacks.