L-modules and the Conjecture of Rapoport and Goresky-MacPherson

Consider the middle perversity intersection cohomology groups of various compactifications of a Hermitian locally symmetric space. Rapoport and independently Goresky and MacPherson have conjectured that these groups coincide for the reductive Borel-Serre compactification and the Baily-Borel-Satake compactification. This paper describes the theory of L-modules and how it is used to solve the conjecture. More generally we consider a Satake compactification for which all real boundary components are equal-rank. Details will be given elsewhere (math.RT/0112251). As another application of L-modules, we prove a vanishing theorem for the ordinary cohomology of a locally symmetric space. This answers a question raised by Tilouine.