Low-lying Zeros of Cuspidal Maass Forms

The Katz-Sarnak Density Conjecture states that the behavior of zeros of a family of $L$-functions near the central point (as the conductors tend to zero) agree with the behavior of eigenvalues near 1 of a classical compact group (as the matrix size tends to infinity). Using the Petersson formula, Iwaniec, Luo and Sarnak \cite{ILS} proved that the behavior of zeros near the central point of holomorphic cusp forms agree with the behavior of eigenvalues of orthogonal matrices for suitably restricted test functions. We prove a similar result for level 1 cuspidal Maass forms, the other natural family of ${\rm GL}_2$ $L$-functions. We use the explicit formula to relate sums of our test function at scaled zeros to sums of the Fourier transform at the primes weighted by the $L$-function coefficients, and then use the Kuznetsov trace formula to average the Fourier coefficients over the family. There are numerous technical obstructions in handling the terms in the trace formula, which are surmounted through the use of smooth weight functions for the Maass eigenvalues and results on Kloosterman sums and Bessel and hyperbolic functions.