We develop a generalisation of the square sieve of Heath-Brown and use it to give an alternate proof of one of the large sieve inequalities in our previous paper [‘A large sieve inequality for characters to quadratic moduli’, Preprint, https://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~ccorrigan/preprint6.pdf].

In this paper, we provide an application to the random distance-t walk in finite planes and derive asymptotic formulas (as $q \to \infty $) for the probability of return to start point after $\ell $ steps based on the “vertical” equidistribution of Kloosterman sums established by N. Katz. This work relies on a “Euclidean” association scheme studied in prior work of W. M. Kwok, E. Bannai, O. Shimabukuro, and H. Tanaka. We also provide a self-contained computation of the P-matrix and intersection numbers of this scheme for convenience in our application as well as a more explicit form for the intersection numbers in the planar case.

Lehmer [‘On certain character matrices’, Pacific J. Math. 6 (1956), 491–499, and ‘Power character matrices’, Pacific J. Math. 10 (1960), 895–907] defines four classes of matrices constructed from roots of unity for which the characteristic polynomials and the kth powers can be determined explicitly. We study a class of matrices which arise naturally in transformation formulae of finite field hypergeometric functions and whose entries are roots of unity and zeroes. We determine the characteristic polynomial, eigenvalues, eigenvectors and kth powers of these matrices. The eigenvalues are natural families of products of Jacobi sums.

We consider families of exponential sums indexed by a subgroup of invertible classes modulo some prime power q. For fixed d, we restrict to moduli q so that there is a unique subgroup of invertible classes modulo q of order d. We study distribution properties of these families of sums as q grows and we establish equidistribution results in some regions of the complex plane which are described as the image of a multi-dimensional torus via an explicit Laurent polynomial. In some cases, the region of equidistribution can be interpreted as the one delimited by a hypocycloid, or as a Minkowski sum of such regions.

We prove several finite product-sum identities involving the q-binomial coefficient, one of which is used to prove an amazing identity of Gauss. We then use this identity to evaluate certain quadratic Gauss sums and, together with known properties of quadratic Gauss sums, we prove the quadratic reciprocity law for the Jacobi symbol. We end our article with a new proof of Jenkins’ lemma, a lemma analogous to Gauss’ lemma. This article aims to show that Gauss’ amazing identity and the properties of quadratic Gauss sums are sufficient to establish the quadratic reciprocity law for the Jacobi symbol.

We use circulant matrices and hyperelliptic curves over finite fields to study some arithmetic properties of certain determinants involving Legendre symbols and kth power residues.

Let $f(x)\in \mathbb {Z}[x]$ be a nonconstant polynomial. Let $n\ge 1, k\ge 2$ and c be integers. An integer a is called an f-exunit in the ring $\mathbb {Z}_n$ of residue classes modulo n if $\gcd (f(a),n)=1$ . We use the principle of cross-classification to derive an explicit formula for the number ${\mathcal N}_{k,f,c}(n)$ of solutions $(x_1,\ldots ,x_k)$ of the congruence $x_1+\cdots +x_k\equiv c\pmod n$ with all $x_i$ being f-exunits in the ring $\mathbb {Z}_n$ . This extends a recent result of Anand et al. [‘On a question of f-exunits in $\mathbb {Z}/{n\mathbb {Z}}$ ’, Arch. Math. (Basel)116 (2021), 403–409]. We derive a more explicit formula for ${\mathcal N}_{k,f,c}(n)$ when $f(x)$ is linear or quadratic.

For fixed $\alpha \in [0,1]$ , consider the set $S_{\alpha ,N}$ of dilated squares $\alpha , 4\alpha , 9\alpha , \dots , N^2\alpha \, $ modulo $1$ . Rudnick and Sarnak conjectured that, for Lebesgue, almost all such $\alpha $ the gap-distribution of $S_{\alpha ,N}$ is consistent with the Poisson model (in the limit as N tends to infinity). In this paper, we prove a new estimate for the triple correlations associated with this problem, establishing an asymptotic expression for the third moment of the number of elements of $S_{\alpha ,N}$ in a random interval of length $L/N$ , provided that $L> N^{1/4+\varepsilon }$ . The threshold of $\tfrac {1}{4}$ is substantially smaller than the threshold of $\tfrac {1}{2}$ (which is the threshold that would be given by a naïve discrepancy estimate).

Unlike the theory of pair correlations, rather little is known about triple correlations of the dilations $(\alpha a_n \, \text {mod } 1)_{n=1}^{\infty } $ for a nonlacunary sequence $(a_n)_{n=1}^{\infty } $ of increasing integers. This is partially due to the fact that the second moment of the triple correlation function is difficult to control, and thus standard techniques involving variance bounds are not applicable. We circumvent this impasse by using an argument inspired by works of Rudnick, Sarnak, and Zaharescu, and Heath-Brown, which connects the triple correlation function to some modular counting problems.

In Appendix B, we comment on the relationship between discrepancy and correlation functions, answering a question of Steinerberger.

We prove a new upper bound on the second moment of Maass form symmetric square L-functions defined over Gaussian integers. Combining this estimate with the recent result of Balog–Biro–Cherubini–Laaksonen, we improve the error term in the prime geodesic theorem for the Picard manifold.

In this paper, we obtain a variation of the Pólya–Vinogradov inequality with the sum restricted to a certain height. Assume $\chi $ to be a primitive character modulo q, $ \epsilon>0$ and $N\le q^{1-\gamma }$ , with $0\le \gamma \le 1/3$ . We prove that

$$ \begin{align*} |\sum_{n=1}^N \chi(n) |\le c (\tfrac{1}{3} -\gamma+\epsilon )\sqrt{q}\log q \end{align*} $$

$c=2/\pi ^2$

$\chi $

$c=1/\pi $

$\chi $

We prove effective equidistribution of primitive rational points and of primitive rational points defined by monomials along long horocycle orbits in products of the torus and the modular surface. This answers a question posed in joint work by the first and the last named author with Shahar Mozes and Uri Shapira. Under certain congruence conditions we prove the joint equidistribution of conjugate rational points in the 2-torus and the modular surface.

We prove an upper bound on the log canonical threshold of a hypersurface that satisfies a certain power condition and use it to prove several generalizations of Igusa’s conjecture on exponential sums, with the log canonical threshold in the exponent of the estimates. We show that this covers optimally all situations of the conjectures for nonrational singularities by comparing the log canonical threshold with a local notion of the motivic oscillation index.

We study the analogue of the Bombieri–Vinogradov theorem for $\operatorname{SL}_{m}(\mathbb{Z})$ Hecke–Maass form $F(z)$. In particular, for $\operatorname{SL}_{2}(\mathbb{Z})$ holomorphic or Maass Hecke eigenforms, symmetric-square lifts of holomorphic Hecke eigenforms on $\operatorname{SL}_{2}(\mathbb{Z})$, and $\operatorname{SL}_{3}(\mathbb{Z})$ Maass Hecke eigenforms under the Ramanujan conjecture, the levels of distribution are all equal to $1/2,$ which is as strong as the Bombieri–Vinogradov theorem. As an application, we study an automorphic version of Titchmarch’s divisor problem; namely for $a\neq 0,$

$$\begin{eqnarray}\mathop{\sum }_{n\leqslant x}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}(n)\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}(n)d(n-a)\ll x\log \log x,\end{eqnarray}$$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}(n)$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{f}(n)$

$f$

$\operatorname{SL}_{2}(\mathbb{Z})$

$A_{F}(n,1)$

$F$

$$\begin{eqnarray}\mathop{\sum }_{n\leqslant x}\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}(n)\unicode[STIX]{x1D706}_{f}^{2}(n)d(n-a)=E_{1}(a)x\log x+O(x\log \log x),\end{eqnarray}$$

$E_{1}(a)$

$a$

$\unicode[STIX]{x1D70C}(n)d(n-a)$

We obtain a non-trivial bound for cancellations between the Kloosterman sums modulo a large prime power with a prime argument running over very short intervals, which in turn is based on a new estimate on bilinear sums of Kloosterman sums. These results are analogues of those obtained by various authors for Kloosterman sums modulo a prime. However, the underlying technique is different and allows us to obtain non-trivial results starting from much shorter ranges.

We show that integral monodromy groups of Kloosterman $\ell$-adic sheaves of rank $n\geqslant 2$ on $\mathbb{G}_{m}/\mathbb{F}_{q}$ are as large as possible when the characteristic $\ell$ is large enough, depending only on the rank. This variant of Katz’s results over $\mathbb{C}$ was known by works of Gabber, Larsen, Nori and Hall under restrictions such as $\ell$ large enough depending on $\operatorname{char}(\mathbb{F}_{q})$ with an ineffective constant, which is unsuitable for applications. We use the theory of finite groups of Lie type to extend Katz’s ideas, in particular the classification of maximal subgroups of Aschbacher and Kleidman–Liebeck. These results will apply to study hyper-Kloosterman sums and their reductions in forthcoming work.

The multiplicative group generated by a certain sequence of rationals is determined, settling a 30-year conjecture.

We consider the distribution of the polygonal paths joining partial sums of classical Kloosterman sums $\text{Kl}_{p}(a)$, as $a$ varies over $\mathbf{F}_{p}^{\times }$ and as $p$ tends to infinity. Using independence of Kloosterman sheaves, we prove convergence in the sense of finite distributions to a specific random Fourier series. We also consider Birch sums, for which we can establish convergence in law in the space of continuous functions. We then derive some applications.

We study the meromorphic continuation and the spectral expansion of the opposite-sign Kloosterman sum zeta function

$$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle (2{\it\pi}\sqrt{mn})^{2s-1}\mathop{\sum }_{\ell =1}^{\infty }\frac{S(m,-n,\ell )}{\ell ^{2s}} & & \displaystyle \nonumber\end{eqnarray}$$

$m,n$

$s\in \mathbb{C}$

We show that the exponent of distribution of the ternary divisor function $d_{3}$ in arithmetic progressions to prime moduli is at least $1/2+1/46$, improving results of Friedlander–Iwaniec and Heath-Brown. Furthermore, when averaging over a fixed residue class, we prove that this exponent is increased to $1/2+1/34$.