Estimates for Character Sums with Various Convolutions

A few elementary estimates of a basic character sum over the prime numbers are derived here. These estimates are nontrivial for character sums modulo large q. In addition, an omega result for character sums over the primes is also included.

We prove new bounds for sums of multiplicative characters over sums of set with small doubling and applying this result we break the square--root barrier in a problem of Balog concerning products of differences in a field of prime order.

We show that for any mod $p^m$ characters, $\chi_1, \dots, \chi_k,$ the Jacobi sum, $$ \sum_{x_1=1}^{p^m}\dots \sum_{\substack{x_k=1\\x_1+\dots+x_k=B}}^{p^m}\chi_1(x_1)\dots \chi_k(x_k), $$ has a simple evaluation when $m$ is sufficiently large (for $m\geq 2$ if $p\nmid B$). As part of the proof we give a simple evaluation of the mod $p^m$ Gauss sums when $m\geq 2$.

We obtain new bounds on some trilinear and quadrilinear character sums, which are non-trivial starting from very short ranges of the variables. An application to a modular analogue of a multiplicative hybrid problem of Iwaniec and S\'ark\"ozy (1987) is given. Moreover, we show that for all large primes $p$, there are primes $p_1, p_2, p_3$ of sizes $p^{{\frac 15}+\frac 1{1987}}$ such that $p_1p_2+p_3 $ is a quadratic non-residue modulo $p$, and there are also primes $q_1, q_2...

In 1918 Polya and Vinogradov gave an upper bound for the maximal size of character sums which still remains the best known general estimate. One of the main results of this paper provides a substantial improvement of the Polya-Vinogradov bound for characters of odd, bounded order. In 1977 Montgomery and Vaughan showed how the Polya-Vinogradov inequality may be sharpened assuming the GRH. We give a simple proof of their estimate, and provide an improvement for characters of od...

We estimate character sums with n!, on average, and individually. These bounds are used to derive new results about various congruences modulo a prime p and obtain new information about the spacings between quadratic nonresidues modulo p. In particular, we show that there exists a positive integer $n\ll p^{1/2+\epsilon}, such that n! is a primitive root modulo p. We also show that every nonzero congruence class a \not \equiv 0 \pmod p can be represented as a product of 7 fact...

We obtain nontrivial bounds for character sums with multiplicative and additive characters over finite fields over elements with restricted coordinate expansion. In particular, we obtain a nontrivial estimate for such a sum over a finite field analogue of the Cantor set.

We prove that for sets $A, B, C \subset \mathbb{F}_p$ with $|A|=|B|=|C| \leq \sqrt{p}$ and a fixed $0 \neq d \in \mathbb{F}_p$ holds $$ \max(|AB|, |(A+d)C|) \gg|A|^{1+1/26}. $$ In particular, $$ |A(A+1)| \gg |A|^{1 + 1/26} $$ and $$ \max(|AA|, |(A+1)(A+1)|) \gg |A|^{1 + 1/26}. $$ The first estimate improves the bound by Roche-Newton and Jones. In the general case of a field of order $q = p^m$ we obtain similar estimates with the exponent $1+1/559 + o...

In our paper, we introduce a new method for estimating incidences via representation theory. We obtain several applications to various sums with multiplicative characters and to Zaremba's conjecture from number theory.

We obtain a new bound of certain double multiplicative character sums. We use this bound together with some other previously obtained results to obtain new algorithms for finding roots of polynomials modulo a prime $p$.