L-Functions in Analytic Number Theory

The Legendre symbol is one of the most basic, mysterious and extensively studied objects in number theory. It is a multiplicative function that encodes information about whether an integer is a square modulo an odd prime p. The Legendre symbol was introduced by Adrien-Marie Legendre in 1798, and has since found countless applications in various areas of mathematics as well as in other fields including cryptography. In this talk, we shall explore what we call "Legendre paths", which encode information about the values of the Legendre symbol. The Legendre path modulo p is defined as the polygonal path in the plane formed by joining the partial sums of the Legendre symbol modulo p. In particular, we will attempt to answer the following questions as we vary over the primes p: how are these paths distributed? how do their maximums behave? and what proportion of the path is above the real axis? Among our results, we prove that these paths converge in law, in the space of continuous functions, to a certain random Fourier series constructed using Rademakher random multiplicative functions. Part of this work is joint with Ayesha Hussain.

The Hurwitz zeta function $\zeta(s, \alpha)$ is a shifted integer analogue of the Riemann zeta function which shares many of its properties, but is not an ”L-function” under any reasonable definition of the word. We will first review the basics of the value distribution of the Riemann zeta function in the critical strip (moments, Bohr–Jessen theory...) and then contrast it with the value distribution of the Hurwitz zeta function.

Our focus will be on shift parameters $\alpha / \in \mathbb{Q}$, i.e., algebraic irrational or transcendental. We will present a new result (joint with Winston Heap) on moments of these objects on the critical line.

In the past century, the studies of moments of L-functions have been important in number theory and are well-motivated by a variety of arithmetic applications. This talk will begin with two problems in elementary number theory, followed by a survey of techniques in the past and the present. We will slowly move towards the perspectives of period integrals which will be used to illustrate the interesting structures behind moments. In particular, we shall focus on the “Motohashi phenomena”.

In this talk, we are interested in a general class of multiplicative functions. For a function that belongs to this class, we will relate its “short average” to its “long average”. More precisely, we will compute the variance of such a function over short intervals by using Fourier analysis and by counting rational points on certain binary forms. The discussion is applicable to some interesting multiplicative functions such as

$$
\mu_k(n), \frac{\phi (n)}{n}, \frac{n}{\phi (n)}, \mu^2(n)\frac{\phi(n)}{n},
\sigma_\alpha (n), (-1)^{\#\left\{p: p^k | n \right\}}
$$

and many others and it provides various new results and improvements to the previous result
in the literature. This is a joint work with Mithun Kumar Das.

This event is part of the PIMS CRG Group on L-Functions in Analytic Number Theory. More details can be found on the webpage here: https://sites.google.com/view/crgl-functions/crg-weekly-seminar

The Hurwitz zeta function is a shifted integer analogue of the Riemann zeta function, for shift parameters $0<\alpha\leqslant 1$. We consider the integral moments of the Hurwitz zeta function on the critical line $\Re(s)=\frac12$. We focus on rational $\alpha$. In this case, the Hurwitz zeta function decomposes as a linear combination of Dirichlet $L$-functions, which leads us into investigating moments of products of $L$-functions. Using heuristics from random matrix theory, we conjecture an asymptotic of the same form as the moments of the Riemann zeta function. If time permits, we will discuss the case of irrational shift parameters $\alpha$, which will include some joint work with Winston Heap and Trevor Wooley and some ongoing work with Heap.