Mini-Workshop: Spherical Varieties and Automorphic Representations

Abstract

This workshop brought together, for the first time, experts on spherical varieties and experts on automorphic forms, in order to discuss subjects of common interest between the two fields. Spherical varieties have a very rich and deep structure, which leads one to attach certain root systems and, eventually, a “Langlands dual” group to them. This turns out to be important for automorphic forms, as it provides a (mostly conjectural) way to analyze periods of automorphic forms and related problems in local harmonic analysis.