An orthogonality relation for GL(4,R)

Dorian Goldfeld, Eric Stade, Michael Woodbury

Published 2019-10-30Version 1

Orthogonality is a fundamental theme in representation theory and Fourier analysis. An orthogonality relation for characters of finite abelian groups (now recognized as an orthogonality relation on $\mathrm{GL}(1)$) was used by Dirichlet to prove infinitely many primes in arithmetic progressions. Orthogonality relations for $\mathrm{GL}(2)$ and $\mathrm{GL}(3)$ have been worked on by many researchers with a broad range of applications to number theory. We present here, for the first time, very explicit orthogonality relations for the real group $\mathrm{GL}(4,\mathbb{R})$ with a power savings error term. The proof requires novel techniques in the computation of the geometric side of the Kuznetsov trace formula.