A fusion construction of local L-factors

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new conjectural framework for calculating local L-factors of p-adic group representations, connecting geometric and categorical methods with existing formulas, and verifies it for Iwahori-fixed vectors.

Contribution

It proposes a more general conjectural description of the space used to compute local L-factors, linking trace functions to geometric objects over the global Grassmannian.

Findings

Conjecture verified for representations generated by Iwahori fixed vectors.

Compatibility established with the known local Langlands correspondence in this case.

Introduces a new geometric approach involving the Beilinson-Drinfeld Grassmannian.

Abstract

We propose a new conjectural way to calculate the local $L$-factor $L=L_\chi(\pi,\rho,s)$ where $\pi$ is a representation of a $p$-adic group $G$, $\rho$ is an algebraic representation of the dual group $G^{\vee}$ and $\chi$ is an algebraic character of $G$ satisfying a positivity condition. A method going back to Godement and Jacquet yields a description of $L$ using as an input a certain space ${\mathcal S}_\rho$ of functions on $G$ depending on $\rho$. A (partly conjectural) description of ${\mathcal S}_\rho$ involving trace of Frobenius functions associated to perverse sheaves on the loop space of a semigroup containing $G$ was developed %by Bouthier, Ngo and Sakellaridis, partly based on an earlier work of Braverman and Kazhdan. Here we propose a different, more general conjectural description of ${\mathcal S}_\rho$: it also refers to trace of Frobenius functions but instead of the loop space of a semi-group we work with the ramified global Grassmannian fibering over the configuration space of points on a global curve defined by Beilinson-Drinfeld and Gaitsgory (a relation between two approaches is discussed in the appendix). Our main result asserts validity of our conjectures where $\pi$ is generated by an Iwahori fixed vector: we show that in this case it is compatible with the standard formula for $L$ involving local Langlands correspondence which is known for such representations $\pi$. The proof is based on properties of the coherent realization of the affine Hecke category.