Families of \(L\)-functions of automorphic forms and applications (Q1424587)

This survey article concerns the study of certain families of \(L\)-functions using analytic number theoretic methods. The \(L\)-functions discussed are of degree \(1\), \(2\) or \(4\) over \(\mathbb{Q}\); they are obtained from a GL\((1)\) or GL\((2)\) automorphic representation over \(\mathbb{Q}\) as the standard \(L\)-function or from a pair of such representations as the convolution \(L\)-function. Following a brief introduction (Section 1), these \(L\)-functions are described in Section 2 of the paper, and the study of their moments is introduced. In Section 3 the method of mollification is described, and recent theorems of Conrey-Soundararajan, Kowalski-Michel-Vanderkam, and Luo are stated. An interpretation of one of these results to arithmetic is also described. Section 4 discusses the method of amplification. The problem of breaking convexity is described, various approaches including amplification are given, and theorems obtained from these approaches (by Duke-Friedlander-Iwaniec, Sarnak, and Kowalski-Michel-Vanderkam) are stated. Once again applications are described, to arithmetic and to arithmetic quantum chaos. The final section gives sketches of some of the ideas in the proofs of various results described in Section 4.