Large character sums: Burgess's theorem and zeros of \(L\)-functions (Q679660)

In many applications, one is interested in when the character sum is \(o(x)\) with \(x\) substantially smaller than \(q^{\frac{1}{2}+o(1)}\), that is, \[ \sum_{n\leq x}\chi(n)=o(x). \] The best unconditional result is given by \textit{D. A. Burgess} [Proc. Lond. Math. Soc. (3) 13, 524--536 (1963; Zbl 0123.04404)] that it holds for all \(x\geq q^{\frac{1}{4}+\varepsilon}\) if \(q\) is assumed to be cube-free. The authors of this paper showed in [J. Am. Math. Soc. 14, No. 2, 365--397 (2001; Zbl 0983.11053)] that it holds when \(\frac{\log x}{\log\log q}\rightarrow \infty\) as \(q\rightarrow \infty\), assuming the Riemann hypothesis holds for \(L(s,\chi)\). The conjecture that \( \sum_{n\leq x}\chi(n)=o(x)\) for any primitive Dirichlet character \(\chi\) modulo \(q\) with \(x\geq q^\varepsilon\) is known to be true if the Riemann hypothesis holds for \(L(s,\chi)\). In this paper, the character sum is connected with zeros of \(L(s,\chi)\). The authors show that \(\sum_{n\leq x}\chi(n)=o(x)\) holds under the weaker assumption that the region \(\{s: \operatorname{Re}(s)\geq\frac{3}{4}, |\operatorname{Im}(s)|\leq\frac{1}{4}\}\) contains no more than \(\frac{\varepsilon^2(\log q)}{1600}\) zeros of \(L(s,\chi)\). Furthermore, in order to ensure the compactness of the argument, they also give in Theorem 1.6 that one can find a sequence of \(L\)-functions with arbitrarily many pinpointed zeros near the 1-line if \(\sum_{n\leq x}\chi(n)=o(x)\) fails for \(x\geq q^\varepsilon\) for infinitely many characters of bounded order, which is described as follows: Fix an integer \(k \geq 2\) and a constant \(\eta>0 .\) Suppose there is an infinite sequence of distinct primitive characters \(\chi_{j}\) modulo \(q_{j}\) of order \(k\) with \(\left|\sum_{n \leq x} \chi_{j}(n)\right| \geq\) \(\eta x\) for some \(x \geq q_{j}^{\eta}\). Theorem 1.6. shows that there exists an infinite sequence \(z_{1}, z_{2}, \ldots\) of complex numbers with \(\left|z_{n}\right|+1 \leq\left|z_{n+1}\right|\) with the following property: There is a sequence of primitive characters \(\psi_{j}\) modulo \(r_{j}\left(\text { in fact a subsequence of the original sequence } \chi_{j}\right)\) with \(L\left(s_{\ell}, \psi_{j}\right)=0\) for \(1 \leq \ell \leq j\) and some \(s_\ell\) satisfying \[ s_{\ell}=1+\frac{z \ell+o(1)}{\log r_{j}} \] and the \(o(1)\) term tends to zero as \(r_{j} \rightarrow \infty\).