Arithmetic statistics of modular symbols (Q1645331)

Given an elliptic curve over \(\mathbb{Q}\), or more generally any weight 2 holomorphic cusp form \(f\) of level \(q\) with Fourier coefficients \(a(n)\), and a cusp \(a/c \in \mathbb{Q}\) of \(\Gamma_0(q) \backslash \mathbb{H}\), an important quantity is the so-called modular symbol \[ \Big\langle \frac{a}{c} \Big\rangle_f =2\pi i \int_{-i\infty}^{a/c} f(z)\, dz. \] Mazur and Rubin investigated the variation of the rank of a fixed elliptic curve \(E/\mathbb{Q}\) in abelian extensions of \(\mathbb{Q}\), and in this context formulated a number of conjectures concerning the distribution of these symbols. Conjecture 1: Fix \(x \in [0, 1]\). Then \[ \frac{1}{c} \sum_{0 \leq a \leq cx} \Big\langle \frac{a}{c} \Big\rangle \rightarrow \frac{1}{2\pi i} \sum_{n \geq 1} \frac{\mathrm{Re} (a(n) (e(nx) - 1))}{n^2} \] as \(c \rightarrow \infty\). Conjecture 2: Let \[ \text{Var}(f, c) = \frac{1}{\phi(c)} \sum_{\substack{a \pmod c \\ (a, c) = 1}} \Big( \Big\langle \frac{a}{c} \Big \rangle- \frac{1}{\phi(c)} \sum_{\substack{b \pmod c \\ (b, c) = 1}} \Big \langle \frac{b}{c}\Big\rangle\Big)^2 \] denote the variance. Then for each \(d \mid q\) there exist constants \(C_f\), \(D_{f, d}\) such that \[ \lim_{\substack{c \rightarrow \infty\\(c, q) = q}} (\text{Var}(f, c) - C_f \log c) = D_{f, d}. \] Conjecture 3: The renormalized modular symbols \[ \frac{\langle a/c \rangle}{(C_f \log c + D_{f, d})^{1/2}}, \quad a\, (\text{mod }c), \, (a, c) = 1, \, (c, q) = d \] satisfy for \(c \rightarrow \infty\) the standard normal distribution. In this paper, the authors prove Conjecture 1 and 2 on average over \(c\) and Conjecture 3 in a refined form where \(a/c\) is restricted to a fixed interval in \(\mathbb{R}/\mathbb{Z}\). The difference between this result and earlier results of the authors on the normal distribution of modular symbols is the different ordering of the modular symbols (namely with respect to the size of \(c\)). The proofs are long and difficult and depend on analytic properties of Eisenstein series twisted by modular symbols, as introduced by Goldfeld, observing that their constant terms are related to generating Dirichlet series with modular symbols. Since this paper has appeared in print, conjecture 1 has been shown for individual \(c\) by \textit{N. Diamantis} et al. in [``Shifted convolutions and a conjecture by Mazur, Rubin and Stein'', Preprint, arXiv:1807.02506], and Conjecture 2 has been shown for individual primes \(c\) by the reviewer et al., [``The second moment theory of families of L-functions'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:1804.01450}].