We study generalized and degenerate Whittaker models for reductive groups over local fields of characteristic zero (archimedean or non-archimedean). Our main result is the construction of epimorphisms from the generalized Whittaker model corresponding to a nilpotent orbit to any degenerate Whittaker model corresponding to the same orbit, and to certain degenerate Whittaker models corresponding to bigger orbits. We also give choice-free definitions of generalized and degenerate Whittaker models. Finally, we explain how our methods imply analogous results for Whittaker–Fourier coefficients of automorphic representations. For $\text{GL}_{n}(\mathbb{F})$ this implies that a smooth admissible representation $\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B}$ has a generalized Whittaker model ${\mathcal{W}}_{{\mathcal{O}}}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B})$ corresponding to a nilpotent coadjoint orbit ${\mathcal{O}}$ if and only if ${\mathcal{O}}$ lies in the (closure of) the wave-front set $\operatorname{WF}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B})$. Previously this was only known to hold for $\mathbb{F}$ non-archimedean and ${\mathcal{O}}$ maximal in $\operatorname{WF}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B})$, see Moeglin and Waldspurger [Modeles de Whittaker degeneres pour des groupes p-adiques, Math. Z. 196 (1987), 427–452]. We also express ${\mathcal{W}}_{{\mathcal{O}}}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B})$ as an iteration of a version of the Bernstein–Zelevinsky derivatives [Bernstein and Zelevinsky, Induced representations of reductive p-adic groups. I., Ann. Sci. Éc. Norm. Supér. (4) 10 (1977), 441–472; Aizenbud et al., Derivatives for representations of$\text{GL}(n,\mathbb{R})$and$\text{GL}(n,\mathbb{C})$, Israel J. Math. 206 (2015), 1–38]. This enables us to extend to $\text{GL}_{n}(\mathbb{R})$ and $\text{GL}_{n}(\mathbb{C})$ several further results by Moeglin and Waldspurger on the dimension of ${\mathcal{W}}_{{\mathcal{O}}}(\unicode[STIX]{x1D70B})$ and on the exactness of the generalized Whittaker functor.

We classify all genuine unitary representations of the metaplectic group whose infinitesimal character is real and at least as regular as that of the oscillator representation. In a previous paper we exhibited a certain family of representations satisfying these conditions, obtained by cohomological induction from the tensor product of a one-dimensional representation and an oscillator representation. Our main theorem asserts that this family exhausts the genuine omega-regular unitary dual of the metaplectic group.

Let F be a p-adic field. Consider a dual pair where SO(2n+1)+ is the split orthogonal group and is the metaplectic cover of the symplectic group Sp(2n) over F. We study lifting of characters between orthogonal and metaplectic groups. We say that a representation of SO(2n+1)+ lifts to a representation of if their characters on corresponding conjugacy classes are equal up to a transfer factor. We study properties of this transfer factor, which is essentially the character of the difference of the two halves of the oscillator representation. We show that the lifting commutes with parabolic induction. These results were motivated by the paper ‘Lifting of characters on orthogonal and metaplectic groups’ by Adams who considered the case F=ℝ.