Formule des Traces et Fonctorialit\'e: le D\'ebut d'un Programme

We outline an approach to proving functoriality of automorphic representations using trace formula. More specifically, we construct a family of integral operators on the space of automorphic forms whose eigenvalues are expressed in terms of the L-functions of automorphic representations and begin the analysis of their traces using the orbital side of the stable trace formula. We show that the most interesting part, corresponding to regular conjugacy classes, is nothing but a sum over a finite-dimensional vector space over the global field, which we call the Steinberg-Hitchin base. Therefore it may be analyzed using the Poisson summation formula. Our main result is that the leading term of the dual sum (the value at 0) is precisely the dominant term of the trace formula (the contribution of the trivial representation). This gives us hope that the full Poisson summation formula would reveal the patterns predicted by functoriality.