Non-vanishing of Dirichlet series with periodic coefficients (Q741667)

Let \(f\;:\;{\mathbb N} \;\to\;{\mathbb C}\) be a periodic function with period \(q\). The authors give various criteria for the nonvanishing of \(L(1,f)\), where \[ L(f,s) := \sum_{n=1}^\infty f(n)n^{-s} \] for \(\Re (s) >1\), and otherwise it is defined by analytic continuation. They assume that \(\sum_{a=1}^q f(a)=0\), so that \(L(f,s)\) is regular at \(s=1\). Four theorems are proved, the first of which states that \(L(1,f)=0\) if and only if \[ \prod_{b=1}^{q-1}{(1-\zeta_q^b)}^{c_{bj}} = 1, \quad \zeta_q : = \exp\left(\frac{2\pi i}{q}\right) \] for all \(j = 1,\ldots, \varphi(q)\), where the constants \(c_{bj}\) are precisely defined in the text. They give a new and simpler proof of \textit{T. Okada}'s criterion for the nonvanishing of \(L(1,f)\) [Acta Arith. 40, 143--153 (1982; Zbl 0402.10035)]. An important tool in the proofs is played by \textit{A. Baker}'s classical results on linear forms in logarithms [Transcendental number theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (1990; Zbl 0715.11032)].