We study generalized and degenerate Whittaker models for reductive groups over local fields of characteristic zero (archimedean or non-archimedean). Our main result is the construction of epimorphisms from the generalized Whittaker model correspondin
g to a nilpotent orbit to any degenerate Whittaker model corresponding to the same orbit, and to certain degenerate Whittaker models corresponding to bigger orbits. We also give choice-free definitions of generalized and degenerate Whittaker models. Finally, we explain how our methods imply analogous results for Whittaker-Fourier coefficients of automorphic representations. For $mathrm{GL}_n(F)$ this implies that a smooth admissible representation $pi$ has a generalized Whittaker model $mathcal{W}_{mathcal{O}}(pi)$ corresponding to a nilpotent coadjoint orbit $mathcal{O}$ if and only if $mathcal{O}$ lies in the (closure of) the wave-front set $mathrm{WF}(pi)$. Previously this was only known to hold for $F$ non-archimedean and $mathcal{O}$ maximal in $mathrm{WF}(pi)$, see [MW87]. We also express $mathcal{W}_{mathcal{O}}(pi)$ as an iteration of a version of the Bernstein-Zelevinsky derivatives [BZ77,AGS15a]. This enables us to extend to $mathrm{GL_n}(mathbb{R})$ and $mathrm{GL_n}(mathbb{C})$ several further results from [MW87] on the dimension of $mathcal{W}_{mathcal{O}}(pi)$ and on the exactness of the generalized Whittaker functor.
In this paper, we prove that any relative character (a.k.a. spherical character) of any admissible representation of a real reductive group with respect to any pair of spherical subgroups is a holonomic distribution on the group. This implies that th
e restriction of the relative character to an open dense subset is given by an analytic function. The proof is based on an argument from algebraic geometry and thus implies also analogous results in the p-adic case. As an application, we give a short proof of some results from [KO13,KS16] on boundedness and finiteness of multiplicities of irreducible representations in the space of functions on a spherical space. In order to deduce this application we prove relative and quantitative analogs of the Bernstein-Kashiwara theorem, which states that the space of solutions of a holonomic system of differential equations in the space of distributions is finite-dimensional. We also deduce that, for every algebraic group $G$ defined over $mathbb{R}$, the space of $G(mathbb{R})$-equivariant distributions on the manifold of real points of any algebraic $G$-manifold $X$ is finite-dimensional if $G$ has finitely many orbits on $X$.
The goal of this paper is to describe the $alpha$-cosine transform on functions on a Grassmannian of $i$-planes in an $n$-dimensional real vector space. in analytic terms as explicitly as possible. We show that for all but finitely many complex $alph
a$ the $alpha$-cosine transform is a composition of the $(alpha+2)$-cosine transform with an explicitly written (though complicated) O(n)-invariant differential operator. For all exceptional values of $alpha$ except one we interpret the $alpha$-cosine transform explicitly as either the Radon transform or composition of two Radon transforms. Explicit interpretation of the transform corresponding to the last remaining value $alpha$, which is $-(min{i,n-i}+1)$, is still an open problem.
