Character Sheaves and Depth-zero representations

In this paper we provide a geometric framework for the study of characters of depth-zero representations of unramified groups over local fields with finite residue fields which is built directly on Lusztig's theory of character sheaves for groups over finite fields and uses ideas due to Schneider-Stuhler. Specifically, we introduce a class of coefficient systems on Bruhat-Tits buildings of perverse sheaves sheaves on affine algebraic groups over an algebraic closure of a finite field and to each supercuspidal depth-zero representation of an unramified $p$-adic group we associate a formal sum of these coefficient systems, called a model for the representation. Then, using a character formula due to Schneider-Stuhler and a fixed-point formula in etale cohomology we show that each model defines a distribution which coincides with the Harish-Chandra character of the corresponding representation, on the set of regular elliptic elements. The paper includes a detailed treatment of SL(2), Sp(4) and GL(n) as examples of the theory.