Griffiths-Schmid conditions for automorphic forms via characteristic $p$

Abstract

We establish vanishing results for spaces of automorphic forms in characteristic $0$ and characteristic $p$. We prove that for Hodge-type Shimura varieties, the weight of any nonzero automorphic form in characteristic $0$ satisfies the Griffiths-Schmid conditions, by purely algebraic, characteristic $p$ methods. We state a conjecture for general Hodge-type Shimura varieties regarding the vanishing of the space of automorphic forms in characteristic $p$ in terms of the weight. We verify this conjecture for unitary PEL Shimura varieties of signature $(n-1,1)$ at a split prime.