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

This article is an expanded version of the talk given by the first author at the conference "Exponential sums over finite fields and applications" (ETH, Z\"urich, November, 2010). We state some conjectures on archimedian and $p$-adic estimates for multiplicative character sums over smooth projective varieties. We also review some of the results of J. Dollarhide, which formed the basis for these conjectures. Applying his results, we prove one of the conjectures when the smooth...

In recent years, maximizing G\'al sums regained interest due to a firm link with large values of $L$-functions. In the present paper, we initiate an investigation of small sums of G\'al type, with respect to the $L^1$-norm. We also consider the intertwined question of minimizing weighted versions of the usual multiplicative energy. We apply our estimates to: (i) a logarithmic refinement of Burgess' bound on character sums, improving previous results of Kerr, Shparlinski and Y...

In this paper we aim to generalize the results in Baier and Zhao and develop a general formula for large sieve with characters to powerful moduli that will be an improvement to the result of Zhao.

We study exponential sums whose coefficients are completely multiplicative and belong to the complex unit disc. Our main result shows that such a sum has substantial cancellation unless the coefficient function is essentially a Dirichlet character. As an application we improve current bounds on odd order character sums. Furthermore, conditionally on the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis we obtain a bound for odd order character sums which is best possible.

In this paper we consider a variety of mixed character sums. In particular we extend a bound of Heath-Brown and Pierce to the case of squarefree modulus, improve on a result of Chang for mixed sums in finite fields, we show in certain circumstances we may improve on some results of Pierce for multidimensional mixed sums and we extend a bound for character sums with products of linear forms to the setting of mixed sums.

We provide estimates for sums of the form \[\left|\sum_{a\in A}\sum_{b\in B}\sum_{c\in C}\chi(a+b+c)\right|\] and \[\left|\sum_{a\in A}\sum_{b\in B}\sum_{c\in C}\sum_{d\in D}\chi(a+b+cd)\right|\] when $A,B,C,D\subset \mathbb F_p$, the field with $p$ elements and $\chi$ is a non-trivial multiplicative character modulo $p$.

We make explicit a theorem of Fromm and Goldmakher [arXiv:1706.03002], which states that one can improve Burgess' bound for short character sums simply by improving the leading constant in the P\'{o}lya-Vinogradov inequality. Towards achieving this, we establish explicit versions of several estimates related to the mean values of real multiplicative functions and the Dickman function.

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 $p$.

We estimate mixed character sums of polynomial values over elements of a finite field $\mathbb F_{q^r}$ with sparse representations in a fixed ordered basis over the subfield $\mathbb F_q$. First we use a combination of the inclusion-exclusion principle with bounds on character sums over linear subspaces to get nontrivial bounds for large $q$. Then we focus on the particular case $q=2$, which is more intricate. The bounds depend on certain natural restrictions. We also provid...

In their recent work, the authors (2016) have combined classical ideas of A. G. Postnikov (1956) and N. M. Korobov (1974) to derive improved bounds on short character sums for certain nonprincipal characters with powerful moduli. In the present paper, these results are used to bound sums of the Mobius function twisted by characters of the same type, complementing and improving some earlier work of B. Green (2012). To achieve this, we obtain a series of results about the size ...