Arithmeticity for periods of automorphic forms

A cuspidal automorphic representation \pi of a group G is said to to be distinguished with respect to a subgroup H if the integral of f along H is nonzero for a cusp form f in the space of \pi. Such period integrals are related to (non)vanishing of interesting L-values and also to Langlands functoriality. This article discusses a general principle, labelled arithmeticity, which roughly states that “\pi is H-distinguished if and only if any Galois conjugate of \pi is H-distinguished.” We study this principle via several examples; starting with GL(2) and leading up to more complicated situations where the ambient group is a higher GL(n) or a classical group.