The eighth moment of Dirichlet \(L\)-functions (Q2450106)

Understanding the behaviour of the moments of the Riemann zeta-function and \(L\)-functions on the critical line has been an important topic in number theory for almost a century. These have various applications, and are related to many important and very challenging problems in number theory. The \(2k\)-th moment of the Riemann zeta-function along the critical line is defined by \[ I_k(T):=\frac{1}{T}\int_{0}^{T}|\zeta(1/2+it)|^{2k}\,dt. \] Hardy and Littlewood obtained an asymptotic formula for the second moment in 1918, and Ingham established an asymptotic formula for the fourth moment in 1926. No such result is known for any other values of \(k\), though there are now several approaches, e.g. random matrix theory, multiple Dirichlet series, ratios conjecture, hybrid Euler-Hadamard product representation, to heuristically derive asymptotic expansions for general \(k\). More recently the analogous questions for various types of \(L\)-functions have also been investigated, but the progress has been very slow. In a recent paper, \textit{J. B. Conrey} et al. [Geom. Funct. Anal. 22, No. 5, 1257--1288 (2012; Zbl 1270.11082)] proved an asymptotic formula for the sixth moment of Dirichlet \(L\)-functions with a power saving error term (the first significant progress in this context since 1926!). Instead of fixing the modulus \(q\) and only averaging over the primitive characters \(\chi\;(\mathrm{mod}\;q)\), they also average over the modulus \(q\leq Q\), which gives a larger family of size \(\asymp Q^2\). Furthermore, a short average on the critical line is also required to remove certain unbalanced sums in the analysis. This family is believed to have the same symmetry with the Riemann zeta-function according to the \textit{N. M. Katz} and \textit{P. Sarnak} philosophy [Random matrices, Frobenius eigenvalues, and monodromy. Providence, RI: American Mathematical Society (AMS) (1999; Zbl 0958.11004)], and their moments are expected to be similar to those of the Riemann zeta-function. Conrey et al.'s result is consistent with the analogous conjecture for the sixth moment of \(\zeta(1/2+it)\). In the paper under review, the authors extend Conrey et al.'s result to the eighth moment of Dirichlet \(L\)-functions. Conditionally on GRH, they obtained an asymptotic formula for the eighth moment, in agreement with the analogous conjecture for the eighth moment of \(\zeta(1/2+it)\). Here the GRH assumption is crucial in order to bound the off-diagonal terms. A similar feature has appeared in the work of \textit{K. Soundararajan} and \textit{M. P. Young} [J. Eur. Math. Soc. (JEMS) 12, No. 5, 1097--1116 (2010; Zbl 1213.11165)]. The paper is technical, but is very well written. It is a beautiful piece of work.