Higher Period Integrals and Derivatives of L-functions

Abstract: We define and study higher analogues of Rankin-Selberg integrals for GL_n*GL_n-1 over function fields and relate the integral values to higher derivatives of unramified Rankin-Selberg L-functions. Our method reveals some relation between special cycle classes over function fields and the geometric conjectures of Ben-Zvi-Sakellaridis-Venkatesh and can be regarded as a first step towards a generalization of the higher Gross-Zagier formula of Yun-Zhang for higher dimensional spherical varieties.