On logarithmically Benford sequences

DOI10.1090/PROC/13112MaRDI QIDQ2821722zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Authors Evan Chen, Peter S. Park, Ashvin A. Swaminathan

Publication date 23 September 2016

Published in Proceedings of the American Mathematical Society (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/1507.02629

asymptotic density Benford's law logarithmic density newform

Density, gaps, topology (11B05) Special sequences and polynomials (11B83) Fourier coefficients of automorphic forms (11F30) General theory of distribution modulo (1) (11K06) Distribution of integers with specified multiplicative constraints (11N25)

Abstract: Let

m a t h c a l I s u b s e t m a t h b b N

be an infinite subset, and let

{a_{i}}_{i i n m a t h c a l I}

be a sequence of nonzero real numbers indexed by

m a t h c a l I

such that there exist positive constants

m, C_{1}

for which

| a_{i} | l e q C_{1} c d o t i^{m}

for all

i i n m a t h c a l I

. Furthermore, let

c_{i} i n [- 1, 1]

be defined by

c_{i} = f r a c a_{i} C_{1} c d o t i^{m}

for each

i i n m a t h c a l I

, and suppose the

c_{i}

's are equidistributed in

[- 1, 1]

with respect to a continuous, symmetric probability measure

m u

. In this paper, we show that if

m a t h c a l I s u b s e t m a t h b b N

is not too sparse, then the sequence

{a_{i}}_{i i n m a t h c a l I}

fails to obey Benford's Law with respect to arithmetic density in any sufficiently large base, and in fact in any base when

m u ([0, t])

is a strictly convex function of

t i n (0, 1)

. Nonetheless, we also provide conditions on the density of

m a t h c a l I s u b s e t m a t h b b N

under which the sequence

{a_{i}}_{i i n m a t h c a l I}

satisfies Benford's Law with respect to logarithmic density in every base. As an application, we apply our general result to study Benford's Law-type behavior in the leading digits of Frobenius traces of newforms of positive, even weight. Our methods of proof build on the work of Jameson, Thorner, and Ye, who studied the particular case of newforms without complex multiplication.

Review text

Let \({\mathbf a}=\{a_i\}_{i\in{\mathcal I}}\) be a sequence of nonzero real numbers indexed by an infinite subset \({\mathcal I}\subset{\mathbb N}\). If \(\sigma\) is a generalized asymptotic density, e.g. the standard asymptotic one \(d\), or the logarithmic one \(\delta\), then \(\sigma({\mathbf a},A)\), \(A\subset {\mathbb R}\) denotes the corresponding density of the subsequence \(\{a_i\in A\}\). The sequence \({\mathbf a}\) is \(\sigma\) Benford in base \(b\) if for any (nonzero) string of base \(b\) digits \(S_b\) (understood as an integer) we have \(\sigma({\mathbf a},b,S_b):=\sigma({\mathbf a},\left\{x\in{\mathbb R}:|x| \text{ begins with }S_b\) in base \(b\)

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