Trace singularities in obstacle scattering and the Poisson relation for the relative trace

We consider the case of scattering by several obstacles in $${\mathbb {R}}^d$$ R d , $$d \ge 2$$ d ≥ 2 for the Laplace operator $$\Delta $$ Δ with Dirichlet boundary conditions imposed on the obstacles. In the case of two obstacles, we have the Laplace operators $$\Delta _1$$ Δ 1 and $$\Delta _2$$ Δ 2 obtained by imposing Dirichlet boundary conditions only on one of the objects. The relative operator $$g(\Delta ) - g(\Delta _1) - g(\Delta _2) + g(\Delta _0)$$ g ( Δ ) - g ( Δ 1 ) - g ( Δ 2 ) + g ( Δ 0 ) was introduced in Hanisch, Waters and one of the authors in (A relative trace formula for obstacle scattering. arXiv:2002.07291, 2020) and shown to be trace-class for a large class of functions g, including certain functions of polynomial growth. When g is sufficiently regular at zero and fast decaying at infinity then, by the Birman–Krein formula, this trace can be computed from the relative spectral shift function $$\xi _\mathrm {rel}(\lambda ) = -\frac{1}{\pi } {\text {Im}}(\Xi (\lambda ))$$ ξ rel ( λ ) = - 1 π Im ( Ξ ( λ ) ) , where $$\Xi (\lambda )$$ Ξ ( λ ) is holomorphic in the upper half-plane and fast decaying. In this paper we study the wave-trace contributions to the singularities of the Fourier transform of $$\xi _\mathrm {rel}$$ ξ rel . In particular we prove that $${\hat{\xi }}_\mathrm {rel}$$ ξ ^ rel is real-analytic near zero and we relate the decay of $$\Xi (\lambda )$$ Ξ ( λ ) along the imaginary axis to the first wave-trace invariant of the shortest bouncing ball orbit between the obstacles. The function $$\Xi (\lambda )$$ Ξ ( λ ) is important in the physics of quantum fields as it determines the Casimir interactions between the objects.

A symplectic restriction problem

We investigate the norm of a degree 2 Siegel modular form of asymptotically large weight whose argument is restricted to the 3-dimensional subspace of its imaginary part. On average over Saito–Kurokawa lifts an asymptotic formula is established that is consistent with the mass equidistribution conjecture on the Siegel upper half space as well as the Lindelöf hypothesis for the corresponding Koecher–Maaß series. The ingredients include a new relative trace formula for pairs of Heegner periods.

Relative Trace Formula for Compact Quotient and Pseudo-Coefficients for Relative Discrete Series

We introduce the notion of relative pseudo-coefficient for relative discrete series representations of real spherical homogeneous spaces of reductive groups. We prove that $K$-finite relative pseudo-coefficient does not exist for semisimple symmetric spaces of type $G_{\mathbb{C}}/G_{\mathbb{R}}$, where $K$ is a maximal compact subgroup of $G_{\mathbb{C}}$, and construct strong relative pseudo-coefficients for some hyperbolic spaces. We establish a toy model for the relative trace formula of H. Jacquet for compact discrete quotient $\Gamma \backslash G$. This allows us to prove that a relative discrete series representation, which admits strong pseudo-coefficients with sufficiently small support, occurs in the spectral decomposition of $L^2(\Gamma \backslash G)$ with a nonzero period.