Joint IAS/Princeton University Number Theory Seminar

The Gan-Gross-Prasad conjecture relates the non-vanishing of a special value of the derivative of an L-function to the non-triviality of a certain functional on the Chow group of a Shimura variety. Beyond the one-dimensional case, there is little hope for proving this conjecture. I will explain a variant of this conjecture (suggested by Wei Zhang) which seems more accessible and report on progress on it. This is joint work with B. Smithling and W. Zhang.