Let
E
be a nonarchimedean local field of characteristic zero and residual characteristic
p. Let
G be a connected reductive
group defined over
E and
π an irreducible admissible
representation of
G(E).
A result of C. Mœglin and J.-L. Waldspurger (for
p≠2) and S.
Varma (for
p=2)
states that the leading coefficient in the character expansion of
π at the identity
element of
G(E)
gives the dimension of a certain space of degenerate Whittaker forms. In this paper
we generalize this result of Mœglin and Waldspurger to the setting of covering groups
of
G(E).
Keywords
covering groups, character expansion, degenerate Whittaker
forms