The fluctuations in the number of points on a hyperelliptic curve over a finite field (Q1011676)

It is well known that the number of points on a hyperelliptic curve defined over a field of \(q\) elements may be expressed as \(q+1+S\) where \(S\) is a certain character sum. In the paper under review, the authors study fluctuations of \(S\) as the curve varies over a large family of hyperelliptic curves of genus \(g\). In the case when the finite field is fixed and the genus grows, they find that the limiting distribution of \(S\) is that of a sum of \(q\) independent variables taking the values \(\pm1\) with the probabilities \(1/(2(1+q^{-1})\) and the value \(0\) with probability \(1/(q+1)\). When both the genus and the finite field grow, they find that \(S/\sqrt{q}\) has a standard Gaussian distribution.