Large character sums: Pretentious characters and the Polya-Vinogradov Theorem

In the present note, we prove new lower bounds on large values of character sums $\Delta(x,q):=\max_{\chi \neq \chi_0} \vert \sum_{n\leq x} \chi(n)\vert$ in certain ranges of $x$. Employing an implementation of the resonance method developed in a work involving the author in order to exhibit large values of $L$- functions, we improve some results of Hough in the range $\log x = o(\sqrt{\log q})$. Our results are expressed using the counting function of $y$- friable integers l...

In this paper, we develop a large sieve type inequality for some special characters whose moduli are squares of primes. Our result gives non-trivial estimate in certain ranges.

In this paper we obtain a new constant in the P\'{o}lya-Vinogradov inequality. Our argument follows previously established techniques which use the Fourier expansion of an interval to reduce to Gauss sums. Our improvement comes from approximating an interval by a function with slower decay on the edges and this allows for a better estimate of the $\ell_1$ norm of the Fourier transform. This approximation induces an error for our original sums which we deal with by combining s...

Assuming the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis, the authors study when a character sum over all n <= x is o(x); they show that this holds if log x / log log q -> infinity and q -> infinity (q is the size of the finite field).

Let $p$ be an odd prime. Using I. M. Vinogradov's bilinear estimate, we present an elementary approach to estimate nontrivially the character sum $$ \sum_{x\in H}\chi(x+a),\qquad a\in\Bbb F_p^*, $$ where $H<\Bbb F_p^*$ is a multiplicative subgroup in finite prime field $\Bbb F_p$. Some interesting mean-value estimates are also provided.

Let $M(\chi)$ denote the maximum of $|\sum_{n\le N}\chi(n)|$ for a given non-principal Dirichlet character $\chi \pmod q$, and let $N_\chi$ denote a point at which the maximum is attained. In this article we study the distribution of $M(\chi)/\sqrt{q}$ as one varies over characters $\pmod q$, where $q$ is prime, and investigate the location of $N_\chi$. We show that the distribution of $M(\chi)/\sqrt{q}$ converges weakly to a universal distribution $\Phi$, uniformly throughou...

Let $\chi$ be a primitive character modulo a prime $q$, and let $\delta > 0$. It has previously been observed that if $\chi$ has large order $d \geq d_0(\delta)$ then $\chi(n) \neq 1$ for some $n \leq q^{\delta}$, in analogy with Vinogradov's conjecture on quadratic non-residues. We give a new and simple proof of this fact. We show, furthermore, that if $d$ is squarefree then for any $d$th root of unity $\alpha$ the number of $n \leq x$ such that $\chi(n) = \alpha$ is $o_{d \...

In this paper we obtain a new fully explicit constant for the P\'olya-Vinogradov inequality for squarefree modulus. Given a primitive character $\chi$ to squarefree modulus $q$, we prove the following upper bound \begin{align*} \left| \sum_{1 \le n\le N} \chi(n) \right|\le c \sqrt{q} \log q, \end{align*} where $c=1/(2\pi^2)+o(1)$ for even characters and $c=1/(4\pi)+o(1)$ for odd characters, with an explicit $o(1)$ term. This improves a result of Frolenkov and Soundararajan fo...

Following the work of Hildebrand we improve the Po'lya- Vinogradov inequality in a specific range, we also give a general result that shows its dependency on Burgess bound and at last we improve the range of validity for a special case of Burgess' character sum estimate.

We use an estimate for character sums over finite fields of Katz to solve open problems of Montgomery and Turan. Let h=>2 be an integer. We prove that inf_{|z_k| => 1} max_{v=1,...,n^h} |sum_{k=1}^n z_k^v| <= (h-1+o(1)) sqrt n. This gives the right order of magnitude for the quantity and improves on a bound of Erdos-Renyi by a factor of the order sqrt log n.