Determination of modular forms by fundamental Fourier coefficients

This article is a research exposition based on the author’s talk at the International Colloquium on Automorphic Representations and L-Functions, 2012, held at TIFR, Mumbai. We consider some special cases of the following question: when is a natural subset of the Fourier coefficients sufficient to uniquely determine a “modular form”? Two kinds of modular forms are considered in this article: a) classical modular forms of half-integral weight, and b) Siegel modular forms of genus 2 and integral weight. These two apparently different scenarios turn out to be closely related. Our results were motivated by, and have several interesting connections to, automorphic L-functions and Bessel models.