The Euler characteristic of $\ell$-adic local systems on $\mathcal{A}_n$

Abstract

We study the Euler characteristic of $\ell$-adic local systems on the moduli stack $\mathcal{A}_n$ of principally polarized abelian varieties of dimension $n$ associated to algebraic representations of $\mathbf{GSp}_{2n}$, as virtual representations of the absolute Galois group of $\mathbb{Q}$ and the unramified Hecke algebra of $\mathbf{GSp}_{2n}$. To this end we take the last steps of the Ihara-Langlands-Kottwitz method to compute the intersection cohomology of minimal compactifications of Siegel modular varieties in level one, following work of Kottwitz and Morel, proving an unconditional reformulation of Kottwitz' conjecture in this case. This entails proving the existence of $\mathrm{GSpin}$-valued Galois representations associated to certain level one automorphic representations for $\mathbf{PGSp}_{2n}$ and $\mathbf{SO}_{4n}$. As a consequence we prove the existence of $\mathrm{GSpin}$-valued Galois representations associated to level one Siegel eigenforms, a higher genus analogue of theorems of Deligne (genus one) and Weissauer (genus two). Using Morel's work and Franke's spectral sequence we derive explicit formulas expressing the Euler characteristic of compactly supported cohomology of automorphic $\ell$-adic local systems on Siegel modular varieties in terms of intersection cohomology. Specializing to genus three and level one, we prove an explicit conjectural formula of Bergstr\"om, Faber and van der Geer for the compactly supported Euler characteristic in terms of spin Galois representations associated to level one Siegel cusp forms. Specializing to trivial local systems we give explicit formulas for the number of points of $\mathcal{A}_n$ over finite fields for all $n \leq 7$.