Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 January 2012
We define and study a Lefschetz operator on the equivariant cohomology complex of the Drinfeld and Lubin–Tate towers. For ℓ-adic coefficients we show how this operator induces a geometric realization of the Langlands correspondence composed with the Zelevinski involution for elliptic representations. Combined with our previous study of the monodromy operator, this suggests a possible extension of Arthur’s philosophy for unitary representations occurring in the intersection cohomology of Shimura varieties to the possibly non-unitary representations occurring in the cohomology of Rapoport–Zink spaces. However, our motivation for studying the Lefschetz operator comes from the hope that its geometric nature will enable us to realize the mod-ℓ Langlands correspondence due to Vignéras. We discuss this problem and propose a conjecture.