On the local density formula and the Gross–Keating invariant with an Appendix ‘The local density of a binary quadratic form’ by T. Ikeda and H. Katsurada

Abstract

T. Ikeda and H. Katsurada have developed the theory of the Gross-Keating invariant of a quadratic form in their recent papers [IK1] and [IK2]. In particular, they prove that the local factor of the Fourier coefficients of the Siegel-Eisenstein series is completely determined by the Gross-Keating invariant with extra datum, called the extended GK datum, in [IK2]. On the other hand, such local factor is a special case of the local densities for a pair of two quadratic forms. Thus we propose a general question if the local density can be determined by certain series of the Gross-Keating invariants and the extended GK datums. In this paper, we prove that the answer to this question is affirmative, for the local density of a single quadratic form defined over an unramified finite extension of $\mathbb{Z}_2$. In the appendix, T. Ikeda and H. Katsurada compute the local density formula of a single binary quadratic form defined over any finite extension of $\mathbb{Z}_2$.