We obtain an upper bound for the number of solutions to the system of $m$ congruences of the type

$$\begin{eqnarray}\displaystyle \mathop{\prod }_{i=1}^{{\it\nu}}(x_{i}+s_{i})\equiv {\it\lambda}_{j}~(\text{mod }p)\quad j=1,\ldots ,m, & & \displaystyle \nonumber\end{eqnarray}$$

$p$

$1\leq x_{i}\leq h$

$i=1,\ldots ,{\it\nu}$

$s_{j},{\it\lambda}_{j}$

$j=1,\ldots ,m$

$h$

$p$

We prove a subconvexity bound for the central value $L(\frac{1}{2},{\it\chi})$ of a Dirichlet $L$-function of a character ${\it\chi}$ to a prime power modulus $q=p^{n}$ of the form $L(\frac{1}{2},{\it\chi})\ll p^{r}q^{{\it\theta}+{\it\epsilon}}$ with a fixed $r$ and ${\it\theta}\approx 0.1645<\frac{1}{6}$, breaking the long-standing Weyl exponent barrier. In fact, we develop a general new theory of estimation of short exponential sums involving $p$-adically analytic phases, which can be naturally seen as a $p$-adic analogue of the method of exponent pairs. This new method is presented in a ready-to-use form and applies to a wide class of well-behaved phases including many that arise from a stationary phase analysis of hyper-Kloosterman and other complete exponential sums.

An asymptotic formula is obtained for the number of rational points of bounded height on the class of varieties described in the title line. The formula is proved via the Hardy-Littlewood method, and along the way we establish two new results on Weyl sums that are of some independent interest.

For an elliptic curve $E/\mathbb{Q}$ without complex multiplication we study the distribution of Atkin and Elkies primes $\ell$, on average, over all good reductions of $E$ modulo primes $p$. We show that, under the generalized Riemann hypothesis, for almost all primes $p$ there are enough small Elkies primes $\ell$ to ensure that the Schoof–Elkies–Atkin point-counting algorithm runs in $(\log p)^{4+o(1)}$ expected time.

We estimate the number of solutions to $|y^{2}-x^{3}|\leqslant X$ with $N\leqslant y\leqslant 2N$, in terms of both $N$ and $X$.

Kloosterman sums for a finite field $\mathbb{F}_{p}$ arise as Frobenius trace functions of certain local systems defined over $\mathbb{G}_{m,\mathbb{F}_{p}}$. The moments of Kloosterman sums calculate the Frobenius traces on the cohomology of tensor powers (or symmetric powers, exterior powers, etc.) of these local systems. We show that when $p$ ranges over all primes, the moments of the corresponding Kloosterman sums for $\mathbb{F}_{p}$ arise as Frobenius traces on a continuous $\ell$-adic representation of $\text{Gal}(\overline{\mathbb{Q}}/\mathbb{Q})$ that comes from geometry. We also give bounds on the ramification of these Galois representations. All of this is done in the generality of Kloosterman sheaves attached to reductive groups introduced by Heinloth, Ngô and Yun [Ann. of Math. (2) 177 (2013), 241–310]. As an application, we give proofs of conjectures of Evans [Proc. Amer. Math. Soc. 138 (2010), 517–531; Israel J. Math. 175 (2010), 349–362] expressing the seventh and eighth symmetric power moments of the classical Kloosterman sum in terms of Fourier coefficients of explicit modular forms. The proof for the eighth symmetric power moment conjecture relies on the computation done in Appendix B by C. Vincent.

We show that the exponent of distribution of the ternary divisor function $d_{3}$ in arithmetic progressions to prime moduli is at least $1/2+1/46$, improving results of Friedlander–Iwaniec and Heath-Brown. Furthermore, when averaging over a fixed residue class, we prove that this exponent is increased to $1/2+1/34$.

We obtain new bounds of multivariate exponential sums with monomials, when the variables run over rather short intervals. Furthermore, we use the same method to derive estimates on similar sums with multiplicative characters to which previously known methods do not apply. In particular, in the case of multiplicative characters modulo a prime $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}p$ we break the barrier of $p^{1/4}$ for ranges of individual variables.

We estimate double sums

$$\begin{eqnarray}S_{{\it\chi}}(a,{\mathcal{I}},{\mathcal{G}})=\mathop{\sum }\limits_{x\in {\mathcal{I}}}\mathop{\sum }\limits_{{\it\lambda}\in {\mathcal{G}}}{\it\chi}(x+a{\it\lambda}),\quad 1\leq a<p-1,\end{eqnarray}$$

${\it\chi}$

$p$

${\mathcal{I}}=\{1,\dots ,H\}$

${\mathcal{G}}$

$T$

$p$

$S_{{\it\chi}}(a,{\mathcal{I}},{\mathcal{G}})$

$H\geq p^{1/4+{\it\varepsilon}}$

$T\geq p^{1/2+{\it\varepsilon}}$

${\it\varepsilon}>0$

$H$

$T$

$$\begin{eqnarray}T_{{\it\chi}}(a,{\mathcal{G}})=\mathop{\sum }\limits_{{\it\lambda},{\it\mu}\in {\mathcal{G}}}{\it\chi}(a+{\it\lambda}+{\it\mu}),\quad 1\leq a<p-1,\end{eqnarray}$$

$p$

We give an asymptotic formula for the number of primes $\def \xmlpi #1{}\def \mathsfbi #1{\boldsymbol {\mathsf {#1}}}\let \le =\leqslant \let \leq =\leqslant \let \ge =\geqslant \let \geq =\geqslant \def \Pr {\mathit {Pr}}\def \Fr {\mathit {Fr}}\def \Rey {\mathit {Re}}p \le x$ of the form $p = [n_1^{c_1}] = \cdots = [n_d^{c_d}]$, where $c_1, \ldots, c_d$ are greater than 1 but “sufficiently close” to 1. This improves work of E. R. Sirota $(d=2)$ and W. Zhai $(d \ge 3)$.

It is well known that the classical Gauss sum, normalized by the square-root number of terms, takes only finitely many values. If one restricts the range of summation to a subinterval, a much richer structure emerges. We prove a limit law for the value distribution of such incomplete Gauss sums. The limit distribution is given by the distribution of a certain family of periodic functions. Our results complement Oskolkov’s pointwise bounds for incomplete Gauss sums as well as the limit theorems for quadratic Weyl sums (theta sums) due to Jurkat and van Horne and the second author.

In his Tata Lecture Notes, Igusa conjectured the validity of a strong uniformity in the decay of complete exponential sums modulo powers of a prime number and determined by a homogeneous polynomial. This was proved for non-degenerate forms by Denef–Sperber and then by Cluckers for weighted homogeneous non-degenerate forms. In a recent preprint, Wright has proved this for degenerate binary forms. We give a different proof of Wright’s result that seems to be simpler and relies upon basic estimates for exponential sums mod $p$as well as a type of resolution of singularities with good reduction in the sense of Denef.

We study the distribution of the size of Selmer groups arising from a 2-isogeny and its dual 2-isogeny for quadratic twists of elliptic curves with a non-trivial $2$-torsion point over $\mathbb {Q}$. This complements the work [Xiong and Zaharescu, Distribution of Selmer groups of quadratic twists of a family of elliptic curves. Adv. Math.219 (2008), 523–553] which studied the same subject for elliptic curves with full 2-torsions over $\mathbb {Q}$ and generalizes [Feng and Xiong, On Selmer groups and Tate–Shafarevich groups for elliptic curves $y^2=x^3-n^3$. Mathematika 58 (2012), 236–274.] for the special elliptic curves $y^2=x^3-n^3$. It is shown that the 2-ranks of these groups all follow the same distribution and in particular, the mean value is $\sqrt {\frac {1}{2}\log \log X}$ for square-free positive integers $n \le X$ as $X \to \infty $.

We obtain explicit bounds on the moments of character sums, refining estimates of Montgomery and Vaughan. As an application we obtain results on the distribution of the maximal magnitude of character sums normalized by the square root of the modulus, finding almost double exponential decay in the tail of this distribution.

We consider the size of large character sums, proving new lower bounds for Δ(N,q)=sup χ≠χ0 mod q∣∑ n<Nχ(n)∣ in almost all ranges of N. The proofs use the resonance method and saddle point analysis.

We study the distribution of the size of Selmer groups and Tate–Shafarevich groups arising from a 2-isogeny and its dual 2-isogeny for elliptic curves En:y2=x3−n3. We show that the 2-ranks of these groups all follow the same distribution. The result also implies that the mean value of the 2-rank of the corresponding Tate–Shafarevich groups for square-free positive integers n≤X is as X→∞. This is quite different from quadratic twists of elliptic curves with full 2-torsion points over ℚ [M. Xiong and A. Zaharescu, Distribution of Selmer groups of quadratic twists of a family of elliptic curves. Adv. Math. 219 (2008), 523–553], where one Tate–Shafarevich group is almost always trivial while the other is much larger.

Paucity is established for a system of diagonal diophantine equations, in which the degrees are the odd numbers in ascending order.

We develop Weyl differencing and Hua-type lemmata for a class of multidimensional exponential sums. We then apply our estimates to bound the number of variables required to establish an asymptotic formula for the number of solutions of a system of diophantine equations arising from the study of linear spaces on hypersurfaces. For small values of the degree and dimension, our results are superior to those stemming from the author’s earlier work on Vinogradov’s mean value theorem.

We give new bounds on sums of the form ∑ n≤NΛ(n)exp (2πiagn/m) and ∑ n≤NΛ(n)χ(gn+a), where Λ is the von Mangoldt function, m is a natural number, a and g are integers coprime to m, and χ is a multiplicative character modulo m. In particular, our results yield bounds on the sums ∑ p≤Nexp (2πiaMp/m) and ∑ p≤Nχ(Mp) with Mersenne numbers Mp=2p−1, where p is prime.

We consider exponential sums with x-coordinates of points qG and q−1G where G is a point of order T on an elliptic curve modulo a prime p and q runs through all primes up to N (with gcd (q,T)=1in the case of the points q−1G). We obtain a new bound on exponential sums with q−1G and correct an imprecision in the work of W. D. Banks, J. B. Friedlander, M. Z. Garaev and I. E. Shparlinski on exponential sums with qG. We also note that similar sums with g1/q for an integer g with gcd (g,p)=1have been estimated by J. Bourgain and I. E. Shparlinski.