Simultaneous nonvanishing of the correlation constant

Abstract

For $q=p^m$, where $p$ is an odd prime number, we study the correlation coefficient $c(\pi;H,K)$ of an irreducible (complex) representation $\pi$ of $G={\rm GL}_2(\mathbb F_q)$ with respect to a split torus $H$ and a non-split torus $K$. We consider a family of non-split tori $K_{\alpha,u}$ indexed by $u \in \mathbb F_q$ and $\alpha \in \mathbb F_q^\times \setminus \mathbb F_q^{\times 2}$. We show that under any identification of $\mathbb C$ with $\overline{\mathbb Q}_p$, and writing $\pi = \pi_r$ where $0 \leq r \leq (q-1)/2$ depending on this identification, we have \[c(\pi_r;H,K_{\alpha,u}) \equiv [P_r(u/\sqrt{\alpha})]^2 \mod p, \] where $P_r(X) \in \mathbb Z[\frac{1}{2}][X]$ is the $r$-th Legendre polynomial. As a corollary, when $m \geq 2$, we prove that there exists $u \in \mathbb F_q^\times$ such that $c(\pi;H,K_{\alpha,u}) \neq 0$ for all irreducible representations $\pi$ of $G$ admitting fixed vectors for both $H$ and $K$.