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We study a variety of problems in the spectral theory of automorphic forms using entirely analytic techniques such as Selberg trace formula, asymptotics of Whittaker functions and behavior of heat kernels. Error terms for Weyl's law and an analog of Selberg's eigenvalue conjecture for $SL_3({\bf Z})$ is given. We prove the following: Let $\cal H$ be the homogeneous space associated to the group $PGL_3(\bf R)$. Let $X = \Gamma{\backslash SL_3({\bf Z}})$ and consider the first non-trivial eigenvalue $\lambda_1$ of the Laplacian on $L^2(X)$. Using geometric considerations, we prove the inequality $\lambda_1 > 3pi^2/10> 2.96088.$ Since the continuous spectrum is represented by the band $[1,\infty)$, our bound on $\lambda_{1}$ can be viewed as an analogue of Selberg's eigenvalue conjecture for quotients of the hyperbolic half space. Brief comment on relevance of automorphic forms to applications in high energy physics is given.

As is well-known, the compact groups Spin(7) and SO(7) both have a single conjugacy class of compact subgroups of exceptional type G_2. We first show that if H is a subgroup of Spin(7), and if each element of H is conjugate to some element of G_2, then H itself is conjugate to a subgroup of G_2. The analogous statement for SO(7) turns out be false, and our main result is a classification of all the exceptions. They are the following groups, embedded in each case in SO(7) in a very specific way: GL_2(Z/3Z), SL_2(Z/3Z), Z/4Z x Z/2Z, as well as the nonabelian subgroups of GO_2(C) with compact closure, similitude factors group {-1,1}, and which are not isomorphic to the dihedral group of order 8. More generally, we consider the analogous problems in which the Euclidean space is replaced by a quadratic space of dimension 7 over an arbitrary field. This type of questions naturally arises in some formulation of a converse statement of Langlands' global functoriality conjecture, to which the results above have thus some applications. Moreover, we give necessary and sufficient local conditions on a cuspidal algebraic regular automorphic representation of GL_7 over a totally real number field so that its associated \ell-adic Galois representations can be conjugate into G_2(\bar{Q_\ell}).

In this paper we provide a sufficient condition for a prime to be a congruence prime for an automorphic form $f$ on the unitary group $U(n,n)(A_F)$ for a large class of totally real fields $F$ via a divisibility of a special value of the standard $L$-function associated to $f$. We also study $\ell$-adic properties of the Fourier coefficients of an Ikeda lift $I_{\phi}$ (of an elliptic modular form $\phi$) on $U(n,n)(A_{\mathbf{Q}})$ proving that they are $\ell$-adic integers which do not all vanish modulo $\ell$. Finally we combine these results to show that the condition of $\ell$ being a congruence prime for $I_{\phi}$ is controlled by the $\ell$-divisibility of a product of special values of the symmetric square $L$-function of $\phi$.