Zeros of Fekete polynomials (Q1572635)

Let \(p\) be a prime and denote by \(({\cdot \over p})\) the Legendre symbol. Fekete observed that if the so-called Fekete polynomial \(f_p(t)=\sum_{a=0}^{p-1}({a\over p})t^a\) has no real zeros \(t\in(0,1)\), then the associated Dirichlet \(L\)-function \(L(s,({\over p}))\) has no real zeros \(s>0\) (and in particular no Siegel zeros); this follows from a representation of \(L(s,\chi)\) as a certain integral transform of \(f_p(t)\) due to Dirichlet. \textit{R. C. Baker} and \textit{H. L. Montgomery} [Prog. Math. 85, 23-40 (1990; Zbl 0718.11039)] proved that \(f_p(t)\) has a large number of zeros in \((0,1)\) for almost all primes \(p\). In the very interesting paper under review the authors study the complex zeros of Fekete polynomials. They prove that more than half of the zeros are on the unit circle; more precisely: there exists a constant \(\kappa_0\), satisfying \(0.500813<\kappa_0<0.500668\), such that the number of zeros \(z\) of \(f_p(z)\) with \(|z|=1\) (counting multiplicities) is \(\sim \kappa_0p\) as \(p\to\infty\). The method of proof relies on Weil's estimates of character sums. Among other interesting things (e.g. zeros off the unit disc), they recover a result of \textit{H. L. Montgomery} [Acta Arith. 37, 375-380 (1980; Zbl 0369.10024)] on large values of Fekete polynomials, namely \[ \max_{|z|=1}|f_p(z)|\asymp \sqrt{p}\max_k \sum_{j\neq 0}{1\over j}\Biggl({k+j\over p}\Biggr), \] where the maximum is taken over all integers \(k\).