English

Linear and quadratic uniformity of the M\"obius function over $\mathbb{F}_q[t]$

Number Theory 2018-10-01 v4 Combinatorics

Abstract

We examine correlations of the M\"obius function over Fq[t]\mathbb{F}_q[t] with linear or quadratic phases, that is, averages of the form \begin{equation} \label{eq:average} \frac{1}{q^n}\sum_{\text{deg }f<n} \mu(f)\chi(Q(f)) \end{equation} for an additive character χ\chi over Fq\mathbb{F}_q and a polynomial QFq[x0,,xn1]Q\in\mathbb{F}_q[x_0,\ldots,x_{n-1}] of degree at most 2 in the coefficients x0,,xn1x_0,\ldots, x_{n-1} of f=i<nxitif=\sum_{i< n}x_i t^i. Like in the integers, it is reasonable to expect that, due to the random-like behaviour of μ\mu, such sums should exhibit considerable cancellation. In this paper we show that the above correlation is bounded by Oϵ(q(14+ϵ)n)O_\epsilon \left( q^{(-\frac{1}{4}+\epsilon)n} \right) for any ϵ>0\epsilon >0 if QQ is linear and O(qnc)O \left( q^{-n^c} \right) for some absolute constant c>0c>0 if QQ is quadratic. The latter bound may be reduced to O(qcnO(q^{-c'n}) for some c>0c'>0 when Q(f)Q(f) is a linear form in the coefficients of f2f^2, that is, a Hankel quadratic form, whereas for general quadratic forms, it relies on a bilinear version of the additive-combinatorial Bogolyubov theorem.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1711.05358,
  title  = {Linear and quadratic uniformity of the M\"obius function over $\mathbb{F}_q[t]$},
  author = {Pierre-Yves Bienvenu and Thái Hoàng Lê},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1711.05358},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

24 pages, 1 figure. Second version optimises the saving in the linear case. Third version uses the proof by Hosseini and Lovett of the author's conjecture to make the main result unconditional