Subconvexity for GL(2) L-functions and Shifted MDS

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.