Kloosterman sum
In mathematics, a Kloosterman sum is a particular kind of exponential sum. They are named for the Dutch mathematician Hendrik Kloosterman, who introduced them in 1926 when he adapted the Hardy–Littlewood circle method to tackle a problem involving positive definite diagonal quadratic forms in four as opposed to five or more variables, which  he had dealt with in his dissertation in 1924. Let  be natural numbers. Then

Here x* is the inverse of  modulo . Context
The Kloosterman sums are a finite ring analogue of Bessel functions. They occur (for example) in the Fourier expansion of modular forms. There are applications to mean values involving the Riemann zeta function, primes in short intervals, primes in arithmetic progressions, the spectral theory of automorphic functions and related topics. Properties of the Kloosterman sums
If  or  then the Kloosterman sum reduces to the Ramanujan sum. depends only on the residue class of  and  modulo . Furthermore  and  if . Let  with  and  coprime. Choose  and  such that  and . Then 

This reduces the evaluation of Kloosterman sums to the case where  for a prime number  and an integer . The value of  is always an algebraic real number. In fact  is an element of the subfield  which is the compositum of the fields 
 
where  ranges over all odd primes such that  and 
 
for  with . The Selberg identity:

was stated by Atle Selberg and first proved by Kuznetsov using the spectral theory of modular forms. Nowadays elementary proofs of this identity are known. For  an odd prime, there are no known simple formula for , and the Sato–Tate conjecture suggests that none exist. The lifting formulas below, however, are often as good as an explicit evaluation. If  one also has the important transformation:

where  denotes the Jacobi symbol. Let  with  prime and assume . Then:

where  is chosen so that  and  is defined as follows (note that  is odd):

This formula was first found by Hans Salie and there are many simple proofs in the literature. Estimates
Because Kloosterman sums occur in the Fourier expansion of modular forms, estimates for Kloosterman sums yield estimates for Fourier coefficients of modular forms as well. The most famous estimate is due to André Weil and states:

Here  is the number of positive divisors of . Because of the multiplicative properties of Kloosterman sums these estimates may be reduced to the case where  is a prime number . A fundamental technique of Weil reduces the estimate

when ab ≠ 0 to his results on local zeta-functions. Geometrically the sum is taken along a 'hyperbola' XY = ab and we consider this as defining an algebraic curve over the finite field with  elements. This curve has a ramified Artin–Schreier covering , and Weil showed that the local zeta-function of  has a factorization; this is the Artin L-function theory for the case of global fields that are function fields, for which Weil gives a 1938 paper of J. Weissinger as reference (the next year he gave a 1935 paper of Hasse as earlier reference for the idea; given Weil's rather denigratory remark on the abilities of analytic number theorists to work out this example themselves, in his Collected Papers, these ideas were presumably 'folklore' of quite long standing). The non-polar factors are of type , where  is a Kloosterman sum. The estimate then follows from Weil's basic work of 1940. This technique in fact shows much more generally that complete exponential sums 'along' algebraic varieties have good estimates, depending on the Weil conjectures in dimension > 1. It has been pushed much further by Pierre Deligne, Gérard Laumon, and Nicholas Katz. Short Kloosterman sums 

Short Kloosterman sums are defined as trigonometric sums of the form

 

where  runs through a set  of numbers, coprime to , the number of elements  in which is essentially smaller than , and the symbol  denotes the congruence class, inverse to  modulo : 

Up to the early 1990s, estimates for sums of this type were known mainly in the case where the number of summands was greater than . Such estimates were due to H. D. Kloosterman, I. M. Vinogradov, H. Salie, 
L. Carlitz, S. Uchiyama and A. Weil. The only exceptions were the special modules of the form , where  is a fixed prime and the exponent  increases to infinity (this case was studied by A.G. Postnikov by means of the method of Ivan Matveyevich Vinogradov). In the 1990s Anatolii Alexeevitch Karatsuba developed a new method of estimating short Kloosterman sums. Karatsuba's method makes it possible to estimate Kloosterman's sums, the number of summands in which does not exceed , and in some cases even , where  is an arbitrarily small fixed number. The last paper of A.A. Karatsuba on this subject  was published after his death. Various aspects of the method of Karatsuba found applications in solving the following problems of analytic number theory:

 finding asymptotics of the sums of fractional parts of the form: 
 
where  runs, one after another, through the integers satisfying the condition , and  runs through the primes that do not divide the module  (A.A.Karatsuba);

 finding the lower bound for the number of solutions of the inequalities of the form: 
 
in the integers , coprime to ,  (A.A. Karatsuba);

 the precision of approximation of an arbitrary real number in the segment  by fractional parts of the form:

where  (A.A. Karatsuba);

 a more precise constant  in the Brun–Titchmarsh theorem :
 
where  is the number of primes , not exceeding  and belonging to the arithmetic progression  (J. Friedlander, H. Iwaniec);

 a lower bound for the greatest prime divisor of the product of numbers of the form: . (D. R. Heath-Brown);
 proving that there are infinitely many primes of the form: . (J. Friedlander, H. Iwaniec);
 combinatorial properties of the set of numbers (A.A.Glibichuk):

Lifting of Kloosterman sums
Although the Kloosterman sums may not be calculated in general they may be "lifted" to algebraic number fields, which often yields more convenient formulas. Let  be a squarefree integer with  Assume that for any prime factor  of  we have

Then for all integers a, b coprime to  we have

Here  is the number of prime factors of  counting multiplicity. The sum on the right can be reinterpreted as a sum over algebraic integers in the field  This formula is due to Yangbo Ye, inspired by Don Zagier and extending the work of Hervé Jacquet and Ye on the relative trace formula for . Indeed, much more general exponential sums can be lifted. Kuznetsov trace formula

The Kuznetsov or relative trace formula connects Kloosterman sums at a deep level with the spectral theory of automorphic forms. Originally this could have been stated as follows. Let  be a sufficiently "well behaved" function. Then one calls identities of the following type Kuznetsov trace formula:

The integral transform part is some integral transform of g and the spectral part is a sum of Fourier coefficients, taken over spaces of holomorphic and non-holomorphic modular forms twisted with some integral transform of g. The Kuznetsov trace formula was found by Kuznetsov while studying the growth of weight zero automorphic functions. Using estimates on Kloosterman sums he was able to derive estimates for Fourier coefficients of modular forms in cases where Pierre Deligne's proof of the Weil conjectures was not applicable. It was later translated by Jacquet to a representation theoretic framework. Let  be a reductive group over a number field F and  be a subgroup. While the usual trace formula studies the harmonic analysis on G, the relative trace formula is a tool for studying the harmonic analysis on the symmetric space . For an overview and numerous applications see the references. History
Weil's estimate can now be studied in W. M. Schmidt, Equations over finite fields: an elementary approach, 2nd ed. (Kendrick Press, 2004). The underlying ideas here are due to S. Stepanov and draw inspiration from Axel Thue's work in Diophantine approximation. There are many connections between Kloosterman sums and modular forms. In fact the sums first appeared (minus the name) in a 1912 paper of Henri Poincaré on modular forms. Hans Salié introduced a form of Kloosterman sum that is twisted by a Dirichlet character: Such Salié sums have an elementary evaluation. After the discovery of important formulae connecting Kloosterman sums with non-holomorphic modular forms by Kuznetsov in 1979, which contained some 'savings on average' over the square root estimate, there were further developments by Iwaniec and Deshouillers in a seminal paper in Inventiones Mathematicae (1982). Subsequent applications to analytic number theory were worked out by a number of authors, particularly Bombieri, Fouvry, Friedlander and Iwaniec. The field remains somewhat inaccessible. A detailed introduction to the spectral theory needed to understand the Kuznetsov formulae is given in R. C. Baker, Kloosterman Sums and Maass Forms, vol. I (Kendrick press, 2003). Also relevant for students and researchers interested in the field is . Yitang Zhang used Kloosterman sums in his proof of bounded gaps between primes. See also 

 Hasse's bound

Notes

References

External links

Analytic number theory