Spectral Analysis of the local Conductor Operator

Abstract

The conductor operator acts on a function through multiplying it with the logarithm of the norm of the variable both in position and in momentum space and adding the outcomes. It makes sense at each completion of an arbitrary number field and arose in previous papers by the author where it was shown to be intimately connected with the Explicit Formula of Analytic Number Theory. I complete here its spectral analysis: the conclusion is that the local contribution to the Explicit Formula expressed as an integral over the critical line is completely equivalent to, indeed precisely realizes this spectral analysis. In this picture the inversion is related to complex conjugation, the additive Fourier transform is closely related to the Tate-Gel'fand-Graev Gamma function on the critical line, and the conductor operator itself is just the logarithmic derivative of the Gamma function, again on the critical line, acting as a multiplier. From this one gets that the conductor operator is not only dilation and Fourier invariant, which was obvious, but also inversion invariant. In this manner, an operator theoretic and spectral interpretation of each local contribution to the Explicit Formula on the critical line has been obtained.