L-Functions in Analytic Number Theory

Subconvexity problems have maintained extreme interest in analytic number theory for decades. Critical barriers such as the convexity, Burgess, and Weyl bounds hold particular interest because one usually needs to drastically adjust the analytic techniques involved in order to break through them. It has recently come to light that shifted Dirichlet series can be used to obtain subconvexity results. While these Dirichlet series do not admit Euler products, they are amenable to study via spectral methods. In this talk, we construct a shifted multiple Dirichlet series (MDS) and leverage its analytic continuation via spectral decompositions to obtain the Weyl bound in the conductor-aspect for the L-function of a holomorphic cusp form twisted by an arbitrary Dirichlet character. This improves upon the corresponding bound for quadratic characters obtained by Iwaniec-Conrey in 2000. This work is joint with Jeff Hoffstein, Nikos Diamantis, and Min Lee.

We study sums of the form $\sum_{n\leq x} f(n) n^{-iy}$, where $f$ is an arithmetic function, and we establish an equivalence between the Riemann Hypothesis and estimates on these sums. In this talk, we will explore examples of such sums with specific arithmetic functions, as well as discuss potential implications and future research directions.

In this talk, we will discuss a well-known formula of Ramanujan and its relationship with the partial sums of the Möbius function. Under some conjectures, we analyze a finer structure of the involved terms. It is a joint work with Steven M. Gonek (University of Rochester).

If we assume the relevant Riemann hypotheses, after a suitable rescaling many functions counting certain primes become almost periodic. There are different notion of almost periodicity in use; here we consider the notion induced by the norm $||f|| = \sup_{x∈\mathbb{R}} \int_x^{x+1} |f(t)|^2\,dt$. We show that if a function $f$ can be approximated by linear combinations of periodic functions with respect to this norm, then the level sets $\left\{x: f(x) \geq t\right\}$ are almost periodic for all real $t$ with at most countably many exceptions. We also compare this notion to other notions of almost periodicity in use.

Please note, the wrong video feed was captured for this lecture so the writing on the blackboard is not legible.

In 1999, Gadiyar and Padma discovered a simple heuristic to derive the generalized twin prime conjecture using an orthogonality principle for Ramanujan sums originally discovered by Carmichael. We derive a limit formula for higher convolutions of Ramanujan sums, generalizing an old result of Carmichael. We then apply this in conjunction with the general theory of arithmetical functions of several variables to give a heuristic derivation of the Hardy–Littlewood formula for the number of prime $k$-tuples less than $x$.