# Paper: Sign Changes of Coefficients and Sums of Coefficients of Cusp Forms

This is joint work with Thomas Hulse, Chan Ieong Kuan, and Alex Walker, and is a another sequel to our previous work. This is the third in a trio of papers, and completes an answer to a question posed by our advisor Jeff Hoffstein two years ago.

We have just uploaded a preprint to the arXiv giving conditions that guarantee that a sequence of numbers contains infinitely many sign changes. More generally, if the sequence consists of complex numbers, then we give conditions that guarantee sign changes in a generalized sense.

Let $\mathcal{W}(\theta_1, \theta_2) := { re^{i\theta} : r \geq 0, \theta \in [\theta_1, \theta_2]}$ denote a wedge of complex plane.

Suppose ${a(n)}$ is a sequence of complex numbers satisfying the following conditions:

1. $a(n) \ll n^\alpha$,
2. $\sum_{n \leq X} a(n) \ll X^\beta$,
3. $\sum_{n \leq X} \lvert a(n) \rvert^2 = c_1 X^{\gamma_1} + O(X^{\eta_1})$,

where $\alpha, \beta, c_1, \gamma_1$, and $\eta_1$ are all real numbers $\geq 0$. Then for any $r$ satisfying $\max(\alpha+\beta, \eta_1) – (\gamma_1 – 1) < r < 1$, the sequence ${a(n)}$ has at least one term outside any wedge $\mathcal{W}(\theta_1, \theta_2)$ with $0 \theta_2 – \theta_1 < \pi$ for some $n \in [X, X+X^r)$ for all sufficiently large $X$.

These wedges can be thought of as just slightly smaller than a half-plane. For a complex number to escape a half plane is analogous to a real number changing sign. So we should think of this result as guaranteeing a sort of sign change in intervals of width $X^r$ for all sufficiently large $X$.

The intuition behind this result is very straightforward. If the sum of coefficients is small while the sum of the squares of the coefficients are large, then the sum of coefficients must experience a lot of cancellation. The fact that we can get quantitative results on the number of sign changes is merely a task of bookkeeping.

Both the statement and proof are based on very similar criteria for sign changes when ${a(n)}$ is a sequence of real numbers first noticed by Ram Murty and Jaban Meher. However, if in addition it is known that

\sum_{n \leq X} (a(n))^2 = c_2 X^{\gamma_2} + O(X^{\eta_2}),

and that $\max(\alpha+\beta, \eta_1, \eta_2) – (\max(\gamma_1, \gamma_2) – 1) < r < 1$, then generically both sequences ${\text{Re} (a(n)) }$ and ${ \text{Im} (a(n)) }$ contain at least one sign change for some $n$ in $[X , X + X^r)$ for all sufficiently large $X$. In other words, we can detect sign changes for both the real and imaginary parts in intervals, which is a bit more special.

It is natural to ask for even more specific detection of sign changes. For instance, knowing specific information about the distribution of the arguments of $a(n)$ would be interesting, and very closely reltated to the Sato-Tate Conjectures. But we do not yet know how to investigate this distribution.

In practice, we often understand the various criteria for the application of these two sign changes results by investigating the Dirichlet series
\begin{align}
&\sum_{n \geq 1} \frac{a(n)}{n^s} \\
&\sum_{n \geq 1} \frac{S_f(n)}{n^s} \\
&\sum_{n \geq 1} \frac{\lvert S_f(n) \rvert^2}{n^s} \\
&\sum_{n \geq 1} \frac{S_f(n)^2}{n^s},
\end{align}
where

S_f(n) = \sum_{m \leq n} a(n).

In the case of holomorphic cusp forms, the two previous joint projects with this group investigated exactly the Dirichlet series above. In the paper, we formulate some slightly more general criteria guaranteeing sign changes based directly on the analytic properties of the Dirichlet series involved.

In this paper, we apply our sign change results to our previous work to show that $S_f(n)$ changes sign in each interval $[X, X + X^{\frac{2}{3} + \epsilon})$ for sufficiently large $X$. Further, if there are coefficients with $\text{Im} a(n) \neq 0$, then the real and imaginary parts each change signs in those intervals.

We apply our sign change results to single coefficients of $\text{GL}(2)$ cusp forms (and specifically full integral weight holomorphic cusp forms, half-integral weight holomorphic cusp forms, and Maass forms). In large part these are minor improvements over folklore and what is known, except for the extension to complex coefficients.

We also apply our sign change results to single isolated coefficients $A(1,m)$ of $\text{GL}(3)$ Maass forms. This seems to be a novel result, and adds to the very sparse literature on sign changes of sequences associated to $\text{GL}(3)$ objects. Murty and Meher recently proved a general sign change result for $\text{GL}(n)$ objects which is similar in feel.

As a final application, we also consider sign changes of partial sums of $\nu$-normalized coefficients. Let

S_f^\nu(X) := \sum_{n \leq X} \frac{a(n)}{n^{\nu}}.

As $\nu$ gets larger, the individual coefficients $a(n)n^{-\nu}$ become smaller. So one should expect that sign changes in ${S_f^\nu(n)}$ to change based on $\nu$. And in particular, as $\nu$ gets very large, the number of sign changes of $S_f^\nu$ should decrease.

Interestingly, in the case of holomorphic cusp forms of weight $k$, we are able to show that there are sign changes of $S_f^\nu(n)$ in intervals even for normalizations $\nu$ a bit above $\nu = \frac{k-1}{2}$. This is particularly interesting as $a(n) \ll n^{\frac{k-1}{2} + \epsilon}$, so for $\nu > \frac{k-1}{2}$ the coefficients are \emph{decreasing} with $n$. We are able to show that when $\nu = \frac{k-1}{2} + \frac{1}{6} – \epsilon$, the sequence ${S_f^\nu(n)}$ has at least one sign change for $n$ in $[X, 2X)$ for all sufficiently large $X$.

It may help to consider a simpler example to understand why this is surprising. Consider the classic example of a sequence of $b(n)$, where $b(n) = 1$ or $b(n) = -1$, randomly, with equal probability. Then the expected size of the sums of $b(n)$ is about $\sqrt n$. This is an example of \emph{square-root cancellation}, and such behaviour is a common point of comparison. Similarly, the number of sign changes of the partial sums of $b(n)$ is also expected to be about $\sqrt n$.

Suppose now that $b(n) = \frac{\pm 1}{\sqrt n}$. If the first term is $1$, then it takes more then the second term being negative to make the overall sum negative. And if the first two terms are positive, then it would take more then the following three terms being negative to make the overall sum negative. So sign changes of the partial sums are much rarer. In fact, they’re exceedingly rare, and one might barely detect more than a dozen through computational experiment (although one should still expect infinitely many).

This regularity, in spite of the decreasing size of the individual coefficients $a(n)n^{-\nu}$, suggests an interesting regularity in the sign changes of the individual $a(n)$. We do not know how to understand or measure this effect or its regularity, and for now it remains an entirely qualitative observation.

For more details and specific references, see the paper on the arXiv.

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