On smoothing singularities of elliptic orbital integrals on GL(n) and Beyond Endoscopy

Recent work of Altu\u{g} completes the preliminary analysis of Langlands' Beyond Endoscopy proposal for GL(2) and the standard representation. We show that Altu\u{g}'s method of smoothing the real elliptic orbital integrals using an approximate functional equation extends to GL(n). We also discuss the case of an arbitrary reductive group, and obstructions for generalizing the analysis of the p-adic orbital integrals.