Faltings heights of CM cycles and derivatives of L-functions

Abstract

We study the Faltings height pairing of arithmetic Heegner divisors and CM cycles on Shimura varieties associated to orthogonal groups. We compute the Archimedian contribution to the height pairing and derive a conjecture relating the total pairing to the central derivative of a Rankin L-function. We prove the conjecture in certain cases where the Shimura variety has dimension 0, 1, or 2. In particular, we obtain a new proof of the Gross-Zagier formula.