# Monthly Archives: March 2017

## Slides from a Talk at the Dartmouth Number Theory Seminar

I recently gave a talk at the Dartmouth Number Theory Seminar (thank you Edgar for inviting me and to Edgar, Naomi, and John for being such good hosts). In this talk, I described the recent successes we’ve had on working with variants of the Gauss Circle Problem.

The story began when (with Tom Hulse, Chan Ieong Kuan, and Alex Walker — and with helpful input from Mehmet Kiral, Jeff Hoffstein, and others) we introduced and studied the Dirichlet series
$$\sum_{n \geq 1} \frac{S(n)^2}{n^s}, \notag$$
where $S(n)$ is a sum of the first $n$ Fourier coefficients of an automorphic form on GL(2)$. We’ve done this successfully with a variety of automorphic forms, leading to new results for averages, short-interval averages, sign changes, and mean-square estimates of the error for several classical problems. Many of these papers and results have been discussed in other places on this site. Ultimately, the problem becomes acquiring sufficiently detailed understandings of the spectral behavior of various forms (or more correctly, the behavior of the spectral expansion of a Poincare series against various forms). We are continuing to research and study a variety of problems through this general approach. The slides for this talk are available here. Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment ## Smooth Sums to Sharp Sums 1 In this note, I describe a combination of two smoothed integral transforms that has been very useful in my collaborations with Alex Walker, Chan Ieong Kuan, and Tom Hulse. I suspect that this particular technique was once very well-known. But we were not familiar with it, and so I describe it here. In application, this is somewhat more complicated. But to show the technique, I apply it to reprove some classic bounds on$\text{GL}(2)L$-functions. This note is also available as a pdf. This was first written as a LaTeX document, and then modified to fit into wordpress through latex2jax. ## Introduction Consider a Dirichlet series $$D(s) = \sum_{n \geq 1} \frac{a(n)}{n^s}. \notag$$ Suppose that this Dirichlet series converges absolutely for$\Re s > 1$, has meromorphic continuation to the complex plane, and satisfies a functional equation of shape $$\Lambda(s) := G(s) D(s) = \epsilon \Lambda(1-s), \notag$$ where$\lvert \epsilon \rvert = 1$and$G(s)$is a product of Gamma factors. Dirichlet series are often used as a tool to study number theoretic functions with multiplicative properties. By studying the analytic properties of the Dirichlet series, one hopes to extract information about the coefficients$a(n)$. Some of the most common interesting information within Dirichlet series comes from partial sums $$S(n) = \sum_{m \leq n} a(m). \notag$$ For example, the Gauss Circle and Dirichlet Divisor problems can both be stated as problems concerning sums of coefficients of Dirichlet series. One can try to understand the partial sum directly by understanding the integral transform $$S(n) = \frac{1}{2\pi i} \int_{(2)} D(s) \frac{X^s}{s} ds, \notag$$ a Perron integral. However, it is often challenging to understand this integral, as delicate properties concerning the convergence of the integral often come into play. Instead, one often tries to understand a smoothed sum of the form $$\sum_{m \geq 1} a(m) v(m) \notag$$ where$v(m)$is a smooth function that vanishes or decays extremely quickly for values of$m$larger than$n$. A large class of smoothed sums can be obtained by starting with a very nicely behaved weight function$v(m)$and take its Mellin transform $$V(s) = \int_0^\infty v(x) x^s \frac{dx}{x}. \notag$$ Then Mellin inversion gives that $$\sum_{m \geq 1} a(m) v(m/X) = \frac{1}{2\pi i} \int_{(2)} D(s) X^s V(s) ds, \notag$$ as long as$v$and$V$are nice enough functions. In this note, we will use two smoothing integral transforms and corresponding smoothed sums. We will use one smooth function$v_1$(which depends on another parameter$Y$) with the property that $$\sum_{m \geq 1} a(m) v_1(m/X) \approx \sum_{\lvert m – X \rvert < X/Y} a(m). \notag$$ And we will use another smooth function$v_2$(which also depends on$Y$) with the property that $$\sum_{m \geq 1} a(m) v_2(m/X) = \sum_{m \leq X} a(m) + \sum_{X < m < X + X/Y} a(m) v_2(m/X). \notag$$ Further, as long as the coefficients$a(m)$are nonnegative, it will be true that $$\sum_{X < m < X + X/Y} a(m) v_2(m/X) \ll \sum_{\lvert m – X \rvert < X/Y} a(m), \notag$$ which is exactly what$\sum a(m) v_1(m/X)$estimates. Therefore $$\label{eq:overall_plan} \sum_{m \leq X} a(m) = \sum_{m \geq 1} a(m) v_2(m/X) + O\Big(\sum_{m \geq 1} a(m) v_1(m/X) \Big).$$ Hence sufficient understanding of$\sum a(m) v_1(m/X)$and$\sum a(m) v_2(m/X)\$ allows one to understand the sharp sum
$$\sum_{m \leq X} a(m). \notag$$

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