Intersection numbers of cycles on locally symmetric spaces and fourier coefficients of holomorphic modular forms in several complex variables

Abstract

Using the theta correspondence we construct liftings from the cohomology with compact supports of locally symmetric spaces associated to O(p, q) (resp. U(p, q)) of degreenq (resp. Hodge typenq, nq) to the space of classical holomorphic Siegel modular forms of weight (p +q)/2 and genusn (resp. holomorphic hermitian modular forms of weightp +q and genusn). It is important to note that the cohomology with compact supports contains the cuspidal harmonic forms by Borel [3]. We can express the Fourier coefficients of the lift of η in terms of periods of η over certain totally geodesic cycles—generalizing Shintani’s solution [21] of a conjecture of Shimura. We then choose η to be the Poincare dual of a (finite) cycle and obtain a collection of formulas analogous to those of Hirzebruch-Zagier [8]. In our previous work we constructed the above lifting but we were unable to prove that it took values in theholomorphic forms. Moreover, we were unable to compute the indefinite Fourier coefficients of a lifted class. By Koecher’s Theorem we may now conclude that all such coefficients are zero.