The Second Moment Theory of Families of 𝐿-Functions–The Case of Twisted Hecke 𝐿-Functions
For a fairly general family of L L -functions, we survey the known consequences of the existence of asymptotic formulas with power-saving error term for the (twisted) first and second moments of the central values in the family. We then consider in detail the important special case of the family of twists of a fixed cusp form by primitive Dirichlet characters modulo a prime q q , and prove that it satisfies such formulas. We derive arithmetic consequences: a positive proportion of central values L ( f ⊗ χ , 1 / 2 ) L(f\otimes \chi ,1/2) are non-zero, and indeed bounded from below; there exist many characters χ \chi for which the central L L -value is very large; the probability of a large analytic rank decays exponentially fast. We finally show how the second moment estimate establishes a special case of a conjecture of Mazur and Rubin concerning the distribution of modular symbols.
more »
« less
- PAR ID:
- 10450418
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Memoirs of the American Mathematical Society
- Volume:
- 282
- Issue:
- 1394
- ISSN:
- 0065-9266
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
Abstract LetEbe an elliptic curve over$${{\mathbb {Q}}}$$ . We conjecture asymptotic estimates for the number of vanishings of$$L(E,1,\chi )$$ as$$\chi $$ varies over all primitive Dirichlet characters of orders 4 and 6, subject to a mild hypothesis onE. Our conjectures about these families come from conjectures about random unitary matrices as predicted by the philosophy of Katz-Sarnak. We support our conjectures with numerical evidence. Compared to earlier work by David, Fearnley and Kisilevsky that formulated analogous conjectures for characters of any odd prime order, in the composite order case, we need to justify our use of random matrix theory heuristics by analyzing the equidistribution of the squares of normalized Gauss sums. To do this, we introduce the notion of totally order$$\ell $$ characters to quantify how quickly the quartic and sextic Gauss sums become equidistributed. Surprisingly, the rate of equidistribution in the full family of quartic (resp., sextic) characters is much slower than in the sub-family of totally quartic (resp., sextic) characters. We provide a conceptual explanation for this phenomenon by observing that the full family of order$$\ell $$ twisted elliptic curveL-functions, with$$\ell $$ even and composite, is a mixed family with both unitary and orthogonal aspects.more » « less
-
Abstract We compute moments of L-functions associated to the polynomial family of Artin–Schreier covers over $$\mathbb{F}_q$$, where q is a power of a prime p > 2, when the size of the finite field is fixed and the genus of the family goes to infinity. More specifically, we compute the $$k{\text{th}}$$ moment for a large range of values of k, depending on the sizes of p and q. We also compute the second moment in absolute value of the polynomial family, obtaining an exact formula with a lower order term, and confirming the unitary symmetry type of the family.more » « less
-
We prove an asymptotic formula for the eighth moment of Dirichlet L-functions averaged over primitive characters χ modulo q, over all moduli q≤Q and with a short average on the critical line. Previously the same result was shown conditionally on the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis by the first two authors.more » « less
-
Abstract We prove an asymptotic formula for the second moment of central values of DirichletL-functions restricted to a coset. More specifically, consider a coset of the subgroup of characters modulodinside the full group of characters moduloq. Suppose that$$\nu _p(d) \geq \nu _p(q)/2$$for all primespdividingq. In this range, we obtain an asymptotic formula with a power-saving error term; curiously, there is a secondary main term of rough size$$q^{1/2}$$here which is not predicted by the integral moments conjecture of Conrey, Farmer, Keating, Rubinstein, and Snaith. The lower-order main term does not appear in the second moment of the Riemann zeta function, so this feature is not anticipated from the analogous archimedean moment problem. We also obtain an asymptotic result for smallerd, with$$\nu _p(q)/3 \leq \nu _p(d) \leq \nu _p(q)/2$$, with a power-saving error term fordlarger than$$q^{2/5}$$. In this more difficult range, the secondary main term somewhat changes its form and may have size roughlyd, which is only slightly smaller than the diagonal main term.more » « less
An official website of the United States government

