A New Approach to the Local Langlands Correspondence for $GL_n$ Over p-Adic Fields

We give a new local characterization of the Local Langlands Correspondence, using deformation spaces of p-divisible groups, and show its existence by a comparison with the cohomology of some Shimura varieties. This reproves results of Harris-Taylor on the compatibility of local and global correspondences, but completely avoids the use of Igusa varieties and instead relies on the classical method of counting points a la Langlands and Kottwitz. Further, we have a new proof of bijectivity of this correspondence, relying on a description of the inertia-invariant nearby cycles in certain situations.