CHARACTERIZING THE MOD- LOCAL LANGLANDS CORRESPONDENCE BY NILPOTENT GAMMA FACTORS

Abstract

Let $F$ be a $p$-adic field and choose $k$ an algebraic closure of $\mathbb{F}_{\ell }$, with $\ell$ different from $p$. We define “nilpotent lifts” of irreducible generic $k$-representations of $GL_{n}(F)$, which take coefficients in Artin local $k$-algebras. We show that an irreducible generic $\ell$-modular representation $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}$ of $GL_{n}(F)$ is uniquely determined by its collection of Rankin–Selberg gamma factors $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6FE}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}\times \widetilde{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}},X,\unicode[STIX]{x1D713})$ as $\widetilde{\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}}$ varies over nilpotent lifts of irreducible generic $k$-representations $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70F}$ of $GL_{t}(F)$ for $t=1,\ldots ,\lfloor \frac{n}{2}\rfloor$. This gives a characterization of the mod-$\ell$ local Langlands correspondence in terms of gamma factors, assuming it can be extended to a surjective local Langlands correspondence on nilpotent lifts.