Central Value Of Automorphic <Emphasis Type="Italic">L</Emphasis>-Functions

We prove a generalization to the totally real field case of the Waldspurger’s formula relating the Fourier coefficient of a half integral weight form and the central value of the L-function of an integral weight form. Our proof is based on a new interpretation of Waldspurger’s formula as a combination of two ingredients – an equality between global distributions, and a dichotomy result for theta correspondence. As applications we generalize the Kohnen–Zagier formula for holomorphic forms and prove the equivalence of the Ramanujan conjecture for half integral weight forms and a case of the Lindel?f hypothesis for integral weight forms. We also study the Kohnen space in the adelic setting. The first author was partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0070762. The second author was partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0355285. Received: July 2005 Accepted: August 2005