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Quadratic Weyl Sums, Automorphic Functions, and Invariance Principles

Introductory Workshop: Geometric and Arithmetic Aspects of Homogeneous Dynamics February 02, 2015 - February 06, 2015

February 03, 2015 (11:40 AM PST - 12:40 PM PST)
Speaker(s): Francesco Cellarosi (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign)
Location: SLMath: Eisenbud Auditorium
Primary Mathematics Subject Classification No Primary AMS MSC
Secondary Mathematics Subject Classification No Secondary AMS MSC
Video

14162

Abstract

Hardy and Littlewood's approximate functional equation for quadratic Weyl sums (theta sums) provides, by iterative application, a powerful tool for the asymptotic analysis of such sums. The classical Jacobi theta function, on the other hand, satisfies an exact functional equation, and extends to an automorphic function on the Jacobi group. We construct a related, almost everywhere non-differentiable automorphic function, which approximates quadratic Weyl sums up to an error of order one, uniformly in the summation range. This not only implies the approximate functional equation, but allows us to replace Hardy and Littlewood's renormalization approach by the dynamics of a certain homogeneous flow. The great advantage of this construction is that the approximation is global, i.e., there is no need to keep track of the error terms accumulating in an iterative procedure. Our main application is a new functional limit theorem, or  invariance principle, for theta sums. The interesting observation here is that the paths of the limiting process share a number of key features with Brownian motion (scale invariance, invariance under time inversion, non-differentiability), although time increments are not independent and the value distribution at each fixed time is distinctly different from a normal distribution. Joint work with Jens Marklof.

Supplements
23242?type=thumb Cellarosi Notes 4.06 MB application/pdf Download
Video/Audio Files

14162

H.264 Video 14162.mp4 365 MB video/mp4 rtsp://videos.msri.org/14162/14162.mp4 Download
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