A quaternionic Saito-Kurokawa lift and cusp forms on $G_2$

Abstract

We consider a special theta lift $\theta(f)$ from cuspidal Siegel modular forms $f$ on $\mathrm{Sp}_4$ to "modular forms" $\theta(f)$ on $\mathrm{SO}(4,4)$. This lift can be considered an analogue of the Saito-Kurokawa lift, where now the image of the lift is representations of $\mathrm{SO}(4,4)$ that are quaternionic at infinity. We relate the Fourier coefficients of $\theta(f)$ to those of $f$, and in particular prove that $\theta(f)$ is nonzero and has algebraic Fourier coefficients if $f$ does. Restricting the $\theta(f)$ to $G_2 \subseteq \mathrm{SO}(4,4)$, we obtain cuspidal modular forms on $G_2$ of arbitrarily large weight with all algebraic Fourier coefficients. In the case of level one, we obtain precise formulas for the Fourier coefficients of $\theta(f)$ in terms of those of $f$. In particular, we construct nonzero cuspidal modular forms on $G_2$ of level one with all integer Fourier coefficients.