GALOIS REPRESENTATIONS FOR EVEN GENERAL SPECIAL ORTHOGONAL GROUPS

We prove the existence of $\mathrm {GSpin}_{2n}$-valued Galois representations corresponding to cohomological cuspidal automorphic representations of certain quasi-split forms of ${\mathrm {GSO}}_{2n}$ under the local hypotheses that there is a Steinberg component and that the archimedean parameters are regular for the standard representation. This is based on the cohomology of Shimura varieties of abelian type, of type $D<^>{\mathbb {H}}$, arising from forms of ${\mathrm {GSO}}_{2n}$. As an application, under similar hypotheses, we compute automorphic multiplicities, prove meromorphic continuation of (half) spin L-functions and improve on the construction of ${\mathrm {SO}}_{2n}$-valued Galois representations by removing the outer automorphism ambiguity.