Primes in short intervals on curves over finite fields (Q2423420)

For a real valued function $\Phi(x)$ such that $0<\Phi(x)<x$, we may ask for the density of primes in the intervals $I(x,\Phi):= [x-\Phi(x),x+\Phi(x)]$ as $x\to \infty$. Let $\pi(I(x,\Phi)):=| \{p\in I(x,\Phi)\mid p\text{ is prime}\}|$. By analogy to the prime number theorem (PNT) the asymptotic density may be conjectured to be $\pi(I(x,\Phi))\sim \frac{|I(x,\Phi))|}{\log x}$ as $x\to \infty$. The ``short interval'' prime number conjecture is: for $0<\varepsilon<1$ and $\Phi(x)=x^{\varepsilon}$, the asymptotic formula above holds. The aim of this paper is to prove an analogue of the PNT for short intervals on a smooth projective geometrically irreducible curve $C$ of arbitrary genus over a finite field $\mathbb{F}_q$. For this end, let $E=m_1\mathfrak{p}_1+\cdots+m_x\mathfrak{p}_s$ be an effective divisor on $C$ and let $f$ be a regular function on the complement of $E$. The interval of size $E$ around $f$ is the set \[ \begin{aligned} I(f,E):=\ &\{\text{regular functions $h$ on $C\setminus \operatorname{supp}(E)$}\\ &\text{ such that $v_{\mathfrak{p}_i}(h-f)\geq m_i$ for $1\leq i\leq s$}\}. \end{aligned} \] The main result of the paper is the following. Fix a positive integer $k$ and $f$ a regular function on $C\setminus \operatorname{supp}(E)$ such that the sum of the orders of all poles of $f$ is $k$, and such that $I(f,E)$ is a short interval, that is, the order of the pole of $f$ at each $\mathfrak{p}_i$ is strictly greater than $m_i$. Assume that either (i) $E\geq 3E_0$ for some effective divisor $E_0$ of degree $\geq 2g+1$ or (ii) $\operatorname{char} \mathbb{F}_q=2$, $E\geq 2 E_0$ with $E_0$ as in (i), such that the differential $df$ vanishes on a nonempty finite subset of $C\setminus \operatorname{supp}(E)$. Then \[\pi_C(I(f,E))=\frac{|I(f,E))|} {k}(1+{\mathcal O}(q^{-1/2}))\] where the implied constant in the error term ${\mathcal O}(q^{-1/2})$ depends only on $k$ and $g$. The paper runs as follows. In Section 2, the generic element in a short interval is described. In Section 3, it is explained how to associate a Galois group to the generic element. In Section 4, the Galois group is calculated and in fact it is shown that it is isomorphic to a symmetric group. Finally, in Section 5 the main result is proved and in fact a stronger result (Theorem 5.5) is obtained.