Motivic action for Siegel modular forms

Abstract

We study the coherent cohomology of automorphic sheaves corresponding to Siegel modular forms $f$ of low weight on $\mathrm{GSp}(4)$ Shimura varieties. Inspired by the work of Prasanna–Venkatesh on singular cohomology of locally symmetric spaces, we propose a conjecture that explains all the contributions of a Hecke eigensystem to coherent cohomology in terms of the action of a motivic cohomology group. Under some technical conditions, we prove that our conjecture is equivalent to Beilinson’s conjecture for the adjoint $L$-function of $f$. We also prove some unconditional results in special cases. For a lift $f$ of a Hilbert modular form $f_0$ to $\mathrm{GSp}(4)$, we produce elements in the motivic cohomology group for which the conjecture holds, using the results of Ramakrishnan on the Asai $L$-function of $f_0$. For a lift $f$ of a Bianchi modular form $f_0$ to $\mathrm{GSp}(4)$, we show that our conjecture for $f$ is equivalent to the conjecture of Prasanna–Venkatesh for $f_0$, thus establishing a connection between the motivic action conjectures for locally symmetric spaces of non-hermitian type and those for coherent cohomology of Shimura varieties.