Existence of non-abelian local constants, and their properties

Abstract

In his Ph.D. thesis, John Tate attached the (abelian) local constants to the characters of a non-Archimedean local field of characteristic zero. Robert Langlands proved the existence theorem of a non-abelian local constant of a higher-dimensional complex local Galois representation. In 1990, Helmut Koch summarized Langlands' strategy for the existence of a non-abelian local constant (group theoretically). The Brauer induction formula plays a crucial role in Langlands' proof. Robert Boltje gives a canonical version of the Brauer induction formula. In this paper, we review Langlands' strategy using Boltje's canonical Brauer induction formula. We then review various properties of local constants, some applications, and open problems.