Analytic $L$-functions: Definitions, Theorems, and Connections

David W. Farmer, Ameya Pitale, Nathan C. Ryan, Ralf Schmidt

Published 2017-11-28Version 1

$L$-functions can be viewed axiomatically, such as in the formulation due to Selberg, or they can be seen as arising from cuspidal automorphic representations of $\textrm{GL}(n)$, as first described by Langlands. Conjecturally these two descriptions of $L$-functions are the same, but it is not even clear that these are describing the same set of objects. We propose a collection of axioms that bridges the gap between the very general analytic axioms due to Selberg and the very particular and algebraic construction due to Langlands. Along the way we prove theorems about $L$-functions that satisfy our axioms and state conjectures that arise naturally from our axioms.