Maass Waveforms and Low-Lying Zeros

The Katz–Sarnak Density Conjecture states that the behavior of zeros of a family of L-functions near the central point (as the conductors tend to zero) agrees with the behavior of eigenvalues near 1 of a classical compact group (as the matrix size tends to infinity). Using the Petersson formula, Iwaniec, Luo, and Sarnak proved that the behavior of zeros near the central point of holomorphic cusp forms agrees with the behavior of eigenvalues of orthogonal matrices for suitably restricted test functions ϕ. We prove similar results for families of cuspidal Maass forms, the other natural family of GL 2 ∕ ℚ $$\mathrm{GL}_{2}/\mathbb{Q}$$ L-functions. For suitable weight functions on the space of Maass forms, the limiting behavior agrees with the expected orthogonal group. We prove this for supp ( ϕ ̂ ) ⊆ ( − 3 ∕ 2 , 3 ∕ 2 ) $$\mathop{\mathrm{supp}}(\hat{\phi }) \subseteq (-3/2,3/2)$$ when the level N tends to infinity through the square-free numbers; if the level is fixed the support decreases to being contained in (−1, 1), though we still uniquely specify the symmetry type by computing the 2-level density.