A nonabelian trace formula

Abstract

Let $E/F$ be an extension of number fields with $\mathrm{Gal}(E/F)$ simple and nonabelian. In [G] the first named author suggested an approach to nonsolvable base change and descent of automorphic representations of $\mathrm{GL}_2$ along such an extension. Motivated by this we prove a trace formula whose spectral side is a weighted sum over cuspidal automorphic representations of $\mathrm{GL}_2(\mathbb{A}_E)$ that are isomorphic to their $\mathrm{Gal}(E/F)$-conjugates.