In mathematics, an L-function is a meromorphic function on the complex plane, associated to one out of several categories of mathematical objects. An L-series is a Dirichlet series, usually convergent on a half-plane, that may give rise to an L-function via analytic continuation. The Riemann zeta function is an example of an L-function, and one important conjecture involving L-functions is the Riemann hypothesis and its generalization.
The theory of L-functions has become a very substantial, and still largely conjectural, part of contemporary analytic number theory. In it, broad generalisations of the Riemann zeta function and the L-series for a Dirichlet character are constructed, and their general properties, in most cases still out of reach of proof, are set out in a systematic way. Because of the Euler product formula there is a deep connection between L-functions and the theory of prime numbers.
The mathematical field that studies L-functions is sometimes called analytic theory of L-functions.
We distinguish at the outset between the L-series, an infinite series representation (for example the Dirichlet series for the Riemann zeta function), and the L-function, the function in the complex plane that is its analytic continuation. The general constructions start with an L-series, defined first as a Dirichlet series, and then by an expansion as an Euler product indexed by prime numbers. Estimates are required to prove that this converges in some right half-plane of the complex numbers. Then one asks whether the function so defined can be analytically continued to the rest of the complex plane (perhaps with some poles).
It is this (conjectural) meromorphic continuation to the complex plane which is called an L-function. In the classical cases, already, one knows that useful information is contained in the values and behaviour of the L-function at points where the series representation does not converge. The general term L-function here includes many known types of zeta functions.
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In mathematics, the Riemann hypothesis is the conjecture that the Riemann zeta function has its zeros only at the negative even integers and complex numbers with real part 1/2. Many consider it to be the most important unsolved problem in pure mathematics. It is of great interest in number theory because it implies results about the distribution of prime numbers. It was proposed by , after whom it is named.
In mathematics, an algebraic number field (or simply number field) is an extension field of the field of rational numbers such that the field extension has finite degree (and hence is an algebraic field extension). Thus is a field that contains and has finite dimension when considered as a vector space over . The study of algebraic number fields, and, more generally, of algebraic extensions of the field of rational numbers, is the central topic of algebraic number theory.
In representation theory and algebraic number theory, the Langlands program is a web of far-reaching and influential conjectures about connections between number theory and geometry. Proposed by , it seeks to relate Galois groups in algebraic number theory to automorphic forms and representation theory of algebraic groups over local fields and adeles. Widely seen as the single biggest project in modern mathematical research, the Langlands program has been described by Edward Frenkel as "a kind of grand unified theory of mathematics.
This year's topic is "Adelic Number Theory" or how the language of adeles and ideles and harmonic analysis on the corresponding spaces can be used to revisit classical questions in algebraic number th
Explores primes in arithmetic progression, focusing on L-functions, characters, and the divergence of the sum of 1 over p for p congruent to a modulo q.
We initiate the study of certain families of L-functions attached to characters of subgroups of higher-rank tori, and of their average at the central point. In particular, we evaluate the average of the values L( 2 1 , chi a )L( 21 , chi b ) for arbitrary ...
We provide new explicit examples of lattice sphere packings in dimensions 54, 55, 162, 163, 486 and 487 that are the densest known so far, using Kummer families of elliptic curves over global function fields.In some cases, these families of elliptic curves ...
We investigate generalizations along the lines of the Mordell-Lang conjecture of the author's p-adic formal Manin-Mumford results for n-dimensional p-divisible formal groups F. In particular, given a finitely generated subgroup (sic) of F(Q(p)) and a close ...