Regularized spectral expansion of a Rankin--Selberg period and moments

Abstract

We establish a regularized spectral decomposition of the squared magnitude of a maximal degenerate Eisenstein series as a Schwartz distribution on $\mathrm{GL}_n$. Although the original problem is on $\mathrm{GL}_n$, its spectral components are described entirely by the automorphic spectrum of $\mathrm{GL}_2$. As an application, we prove a partial reciprocity formula relating the second moment of $\mathrm{GL}_n\times\mathrm{GL}_n$ Rankin--Selberg central $L$-values and a mixed moment of $L$-values of $\mathrm{GL}_2$. We also prove, assuming the generalized Ramanujan conjecture, an asymptotic formula for the second moment of the above Rankin--Selberg $L$-functions over a conductor-aspect family with an error term of square-root-cancellation strength.