Zeros of Dirichlet \(L\)-functions near the real axis and Chebyshev's bias (Q5931955)

Let \(\pi_{q,a}(x)\) denote the number of primes \(p\leq x\) with \(p\equiv a\pmod q\). For \(q\geq 3\), let \(c(q)\) be the ratio of the number of quadratic nonresidues to the number of quadratic residues \((\operatorname {mod}q)\). Moreover, let \(P_{q,N,R}(x)= \frac{\log x}{\sqrt{x}} (\sum_b \pi_{q,b}(x)- c(q) \sum_a \pi_{q,a}(x))\), where \(a\) runs over the quadratic residues modulo \(q\), and \(b\) runs over the quadratic nonresidues. Assuming the generalized Riemann hypothesis for \(L\)-functions \((\operatorname {mod}q)\) and linear independence of the set of imaginary parts of their nontrivial zeros, \textit{M. Rubinstein} and \textit{P. Sarnak} [Exp. Math. 3, 173-197 (1994; Zbl 0823.11050)] proved that the logarithmic density of the set \(\{x: P_{q,N,R}(x)> 0\}\) is greater than \(1/2\) for all primes \(q\) (``Chebyshev's bias for \(q\)''), and tends to \(1/2\) as \(q\) tends to infinity. The paper contains an interesting discussion of various computational aspects of the Chebyshev bias. In particular the following problems are addressed: (1) to find an ``easy'' way to compute Chebyshev's bias, (2) describe the dependence on the location of the low lying zeros of \(L(s,\chi_q)\), \(\chi_q\) being the real non-principal character \((\operatorname {mod}q)\), and (3) to approximate Chebyshev's bias using actual prime counts. A number of numerical results supporting existing conditional theorems is provided.