We obtain for the first time an improvement over the local bound in the depth aspect for sup-norms of newforms on an indefinite quaternion division algebra over Q. A central role in our method is played by the decay of local matrix coefficients. More generally, we prove a strong upper bound in the level aspect for sup-norms of automorphic forms belonging to any family whose associated matrix coefficients have a proper decay along a suitable sequence of compact subsets.Remark 1.1. The lists above omit numerous recent works on the sup-norm problem concerning lower bounds, non-trivial character, hybrid bounds, holomorphic modular forms, real weights, generalizations to number fields and to higher rank groups, forms that do not correspond to newvectors at the ramified places, and so on and so forth. We refer the reader to the introductions of [2,17] for brief discussions of some of these related results.
The bound(1)2+ǫ 1 is of particular importance because it is the immediate bound emerging from the adelic pre-trace formula where the local test function at each ramified prime is chosen to be essentially the matrix coefficient of a (suitable translate of a) local newvector. This bound was originally proved by Marshall [14] for D a division algebra; in the case where D = M 2 (Q), it was noted in [14] that the same bound holds provided one restricts the domain to a fixed compact set. With additional work involving Whittaker expansions near various cusps, which was done in [16], it is now known that the bound (1) also holds for D = M 2 (Q). In fact, as noted earlier, it was shown in [16] that the stronger bound f ∞ ≪ λ,ǫ N 1/6 N