scientific article; zbMATH DE number 20492

The ``classical large sieve inequality for character sums is \[ \sum_{q\leq Q}{q\over\phi(q)} \sum^* \;\bigl| \sum_{n\leq x} a_ n \chi(n) \bigr| ^ 2 \leq (x+Q^ 2)\| a \| ^ 2, \] where the \(*\) denotes that the sum is over primitive characters \(\mod q\), and \(\| a \| ^ 2=\sum_ n | a_ n|^ 2\). \textit{H. L. Montgomery} [J. Fac.Sci. Univ. Tokyo Sect. IA 28, 805-812 (1981; Zbl 0498.10024)] proved that \[ \sum_{q\leq Q}{q\over\phi(q)} \max_{y\leq x} \bigl| \sum_{n\leq y} a_ n \chi(n) \bigr|^ 2\ll (x+Q^ 2)\| a \|^ 2. \] The proof used Hunt's quantitative form of Carleson's theorem on almost sure convergence of \(L^ 2\) Fourier series. He further remarked that an elementary argument allowed one to show that \[ \sum_{q\leq Q} {q\over\phi(q)} \sum^* \;\bigl|\max_{y\leq x} \sum_{n\leq y} a_ n \chi(n) \bigr|^ 2 \ll (N+Q^ 2)(\log N)^ 2 \| a \|^ 2. \] Note that the maximum has been taken before summing over \(\chi\), but at some loss of precision. The author uses a simple argument to give a variant of the above result that saves a logarithm factor in the first term. More precisely, he shows that \[ \sum_{qr\leq Q, (q,r)=1}{q\over\phi(qr)} \sum^*\;\max_{y\leq x} \;\bigl| \sum_{n\leq y} a_ n \chi(n) c_ r(n)\bigr|^ 2 \ll\left(x+Q^ 2(\log x)^{2+\epsilon}\right)\| a \|^ 2, \tag{1} \] where \(c_ r(n)\) is the Ramanujan sum \(c_ r(n)=\sum_{b=1,(r,q)=1}^ q e(bn/r).\) The effect of including \(c_ r(n)\) is to give extra weight to the terms with \(n\) prime. Accordingly, a corollary of (1) is that \[ \sum_{q\leq Q} \sum^* \;\max_{y\leq x} \;\bigl|\sum_{p\leq y} a_ p \chi(p)\bigr|^ 2 \ll\left({x\over\log x}+Q^{2+\epsilon}\right) \sum_{p\leq x} | a_ p|^ 2, \] where \(p\) runs over the primes.

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