Generalized and degenerate Whittaker models

Abstract

We study generalized and degenerate Whittaker models for reductive groups over local fields of characteristic zero (archimedean or non-archimedean). Our main result is the construction of epimorphisms from the generalized Whittaker model corresponding to a nilpotent orbit to any degenerate Whittaker model corresponding to the same orbit, and to certain degenerate Whittaker models corresponding to bigger orbits. We also give choice-free definitions of generalized and degenerate Whittaker models. Finally, we explain how our methods imply analogous results for Whittaker-Fourier coefficients of automorphic representations. For $\mathrm{GL}_n(F)$ this implies that a smooth admissible representation $\pi$ has a generalized Whittaker model $\mathcal{W}_{\mathcal{O}}(\pi)$ corresponding to a nilpotent coadjoint orbit $\mathcal{O}$ if and only if $\mathcal{O}$ lies in the (closure of) the wave-front set $\mathrm{WF}(\pi)$. Previously this was only known to hold for $F$ non-archimedean and $\mathcal{O}$ maximal in $\mathrm{WF}(\pi)$, see [MW87]. We also express $\mathcal{W}_{\mathcal{O}}(\pi)$ as an iteration of a version of the Bernstein-Zelevinsky derivatives [BZ77,AGS15a]. This enables us to extend to $\mathrm{GL_n}(\mathbb{R})$ and $\mathrm{GL_n}(\mathbb{C})$ several further results from [MW87] on the dimension of $\mathcal{W}_{\mathcal{O}}(\pi)$ and on the exactness of the generalized Whittaker functor.