ARCHIMEDEAN NEWFORM THEORY FOR

We introduce a new invariant, the conductor exponent, of a generic irreducible Casselman–Wallach representation of $\operatorname {\mathrm {GL}}_n(F)$ , where F is an archimedean local field, that quantifies the extent to which this representation may be ramified. We also determine a distinguished vector, the newform, occurring with multiplicity one in this representation, with the complexity of this vector measured in a natural way by the conductor exponent. Finally, we show that the newform is a test vector for $\operatorname {\mathrm {GL}}_n \times \operatorname {\mathrm {GL}}_n$ and $\operatorname {\mathrm {GL}}_n \times \operatorname {\mathrm {GL}}_{n - 1}$ Rankin–Selberg integrals when the second representation is unramified. This theory parallels an analogous nonarchimedean theory due to Jacquet, Piatetski-Shapiro, and Shalika; combined, this completes a global theory of newforms for automorphic representations of $\operatorname {\mathrm {GL}}_n$ over number fields. By-products of the proofs include new proofs of Stade’s formulæ and a new resolution of the test vector problem for archimedean Godement–Jacquet zeta integrals.