Traces of Hecke operators on Drinfeld modular forms for $\mathbb{F}_q[T]$

Abstract: In this paper, we study traces of Hecke operators on Drinfeld modular forms of level 1 in the case $A = \mathbb{F}_q[T]$. We deduce closed-form expressions for traces of Hecke operators corresponding to primes of degree at most 2 and provide algorithms for primes of higher degree. We improve the Ramanujan bound and deduce the decomposition of cusp forms of level $\Gamma_0(\mathfrak{p})$ into oldforms and newforms, as conjectured by Bandini-Valentino, under the hypothesis that each Hecke eigenvalue has multiplicity less than $p$.