In mathematics, an exponential sum may be a finite Fourier series (i.e. a trigonometric polynomial), or other finite sum formed using the exponential function, usually expressed by means of the function
Therefore, a typical exponential sum may take the form
summed over a finite sequence of real numbers xn.
If we allow some real coefficients an, to get the form
it is the same as allowing exponents that are complex numbers. Both forms are certainly useful in applications. A large part of twentieth century analytic number theory was devoted to finding good estimates for these sums, a trend started by basic work of Hermann Weyl in diophantine approximation.
The main thrust of the subject is that a sum
is trivially estimated by the number N of terms. That is, the absolute value
by the triangle inequality, since each summand has absolute value 1. In applications one would like to do better. That involves proving some cancellation takes place, or in other words that this sum of complex numbers on the unit circle is not of numbers all with the same argument. The best that is reasonable to hope for is an estimate of the form
which signifies, up to the implied constant in the big O notation, that the sum resembles a random walk in two dimensions.
Such an estimate can be considered ideal; it is unattainable in many of the major problems, and estimates
have to be used, where the o(N) function represents only a small saving on the trivial estimate. A typical 'small saving' may be a factor of log(N), for example. Even such a minor-seeming result in the right direction has to be referred all the way back to the structure of the initial sequence xn, to show a degree of randomness. The techniques involved are ingenious and subtle.
A variant of 'Weyl differencing' investigated by Weyl involving a generating exponential sum
was previously studied by Weyl himself, he developed a method to express the sum as the value , where 'G' can be defined via a linear differential equation similar to Dyson equation obtained via summation by parts.
If the sum is of the form
where ƒ is a smooth function, we could use the Euler–Maclaurin formula to convert the series into an integral, plus some corrections involving derivatives of S(x), then for large values of a you could use "stationary phase" method to calculate the integral and give an approximate evaluation of the sum. Major advances in the subject were Van der Corput's method (c. 1920), related to the principle of stationary phase, and the later Vinogradov method (c.1930).
The large sieve method (c.1960), the work of many researchers, is a relatively transparent general principle; but no one method has general application.
Many types of sums are used in formulating particular problems; applications require usually a reduction to some known type, often by ingenious manipulations. Partial summation can be used to remove coefficients an, in many cases.
A basic distinction is between a complete exponential sum, which is typically a sum over all residue classes modulo some integer N (or more general finite ring), and an incomplete exponential sum where the range of summation is restricted by some inequality. Examples of complete exponential sums are Gauss sums and Kloosterman sums; these are in some sense finite field or finite ring analogues of the gamma function and some sort of Bessel function, respectively, and have many 'structural' properties. An example of an incomplete sum is the partial sum of the quadratic Gauss sum (indeed, the case investigated by Gauss). Here there are good estimates for sums over shorter ranges than the whole set of residue classes, because, in geometric terms, the partial sums approximate a Cornu spiral; this implies massive cancellation.
Auxiliary types of sums occur in the theory, for example character sums; going back to Harold Davenport's thesis. The Weil conjectures had major applications to complete sums with domain restricted by polynomial conditions (i.e., along an algebraic variety over a finite field).
One of the most general types of exponential sum is the Weyl sum, with exponents 2πif(n) where f is a fairly general real-valued smooth function. These are the sums involved in the distribution of the values
according to Weyl's equidistribution criterion. A basic advance was Weyl's inequality for such sums, for polynomial f.
There is a general theory of exponent pairs, which formulates estimates. An important case is where f is logarithmic, in relation with the Riemann zeta function. See also equidistribution theorem. [1]
Let p be an odd prime and let . Then the Quadratic Gauss sum is given by
where the square roots are taken to be positive.
This is the ideal degree of cancellation one could hope for without any a priori knowledge of the structure of the sum, since it matches the scaling of a random walk.
The sum of exponentials is a useful model in pharmacokinetics (chemical kinetics in general) for describing the concentration of a substance over time. The exponential terms correspond to first-order reactions, which in pharmacology corresponds to the number of modelled diffusion compartments. [2] [3]
In mathematics, a complex number is an element of a number system that extends the real numbers with a specific element denoted i, called the imaginary unit and satisfying the equation ; every complex number can be expressed in the form , where a and b are real numbers. Because no real number satisfies the above equation, i was called an imaginary number by René Descartes. For the complex number , a is called the real part, and b is called the imaginary part. The set of complex numbers is denoted by either of the symbols or C. Despite the historical nomenclature "imaginary", complex numbers are regarded in the mathematical sciences as just as "real" as the real numbers and are fundamental in many aspects of the scientific description of the natural world.
The Möbius function μ(n) is a multiplicative function in number theory introduced by the German mathematician August Ferdinand Möbius (also transliterated Moebius) in 1832. It is ubiquitous in elementary and analytic number theory and most often appears as part of its namesake the Möbius inversion formula. Following work of Gian-Carlo Rota in the 1960s, generalizations of the Möbius function were introduced into combinatorics, and are similarly denoted μ(x).
In mathematics, a square-free integer (or squarefree integer) is an integer which is divisible by no square number other than 1. That is, its prime factorization has exactly one factor for each prime that appears in it. For example, 10 = 2 ⋅ 5 is square-free, but 18 = 2 ⋅ 3 ⋅ 3 is not, because 18 is divisible by 9 = 32. The smallest positive square-free numbers are
In mathematics, a transcendental number is a real or complex number that is not algebraic – that is, not the root of a non-zero polynomial of finite degree with rational coefficients. The best known transcendental numbers are π and e.
In mathematics, a generating function is a way of encoding an infinite sequence of numbers by treating them as the coefficients of a formal power series. This series is called the generating function of the sequence. Unlike an ordinary series, the formal power series is not required to converge: in fact, the generating function is not actually regarded as a function, and the "variable" remains an indeterminate. Generating functions were first introduced by Abraham de Moivre in 1730, in order to solve the general linear recurrence problem. One can generalize to formal power series in more than one indeterminate, to encode information about infinite multi-dimensional arrays of numbers.
In mathematics, a root of unity, occasionally called a de Moivre number, is any complex number that yields 1 when raised to some positive integer power n. Roots of unity are used in many branches of mathematics, and are especially important in number theory, the theory of group characters, and the discrete Fourier transform.
In mathematics, analytic number theory is a branch of number theory that uses methods from mathematical analysis to solve problems about the integers. It is often said to have begun with Peter Gustav Lejeune Dirichlet's 1837 introduction of Dirichlet L-functions to give the first proof of Dirichlet's theorem on arithmetic progressions. It is well known for its results on prime numbers and additive number theory.
In mathematics, in the area of number theory, a Gaussian period is a certain kind of sum of roots of unity. The periods permit explicit calculations in cyclotomic fields connected with Galois theory and with harmonic analysis. They are basic in the classical theory called cyclotomy. Closely related is the Gauss sum, a type of exponential sum which is a linear combination of periods.
In mathematics, complex multiplication (CM) is the theory of elliptic curves E that have an endomorphism ring larger than the integers. Put another way, it contains the theory of elliptic functions with extra symmetries, such as are visible when the period lattice is the Gaussian integer lattice or Eisenstein integer lattice.
In mathematics, an expression is in closed form if it is formed with constants, variables and a finite set of basic functions connected by arithmetic operations and function composition. Commonly, the allowed functions are nth root, exponential function, logarithm, and trigonometric functions. However, the set of basic functions depends on the context.
In mathematics, a divergent series is an infinite series that is not convergent, meaning that the infinite sequence of the partial sums of the series does not have a finite limit.
In mathematics, a sequence (s1, s2, s3, ...) of real numbers is said to be equidistributed, or uniformly distributed, if the proportion of terms falling in a subinterval is proportional to the length of that subinterval. Such sequences are studied in Diophantine approximation theory and have applications to Monte Carlo integration.
In mathematics, the equidistribution theorem is the statement that the sequence
In mathematics, a character sum is a sum of values of a Dirichlet character χ moduloN, taken over a given range of values of n. Such sums are basic in a number of questions, for example in the distribution of quadratic residues, and in particular in the classical question of finding an upper bound for the least quadratic non-residue moduloN. Character sums are often closely linked to exponential sums by the Gauss sums.
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.
In mathematics and theoretical physics, zeta function regularization is a type of regularization or summability method that assigns finite values to divergent sums or products, and in particular can be used to define determinants and traces of some self-adjoint operators. The technique is now commonly applied to problems in physics, but has its origins in attempts to give precise meanings to ill-conditioned sums appearing in number theory.
In number theory, the divisor summatory function is a function that is a sum over the divisor function. It frequently occurs in the study of the asymptotic behaviour of the Riemann zeta function. The various studies of the behaviour of the divisor function are sometimes called divisor problems.
In mathematics, Kummer sum is the name given to certain cubic Gauss sums for a prime modulus p, with p congruent to 1 modulo 3. They are named after Ernst Kummer, who made a conjecture about the statistical properties of their arguments, as complex numbers. These sums were known and used before Kummer, in the theory of cyclotomy.
In algebraic number theory, a Gauss sum or Gaussian sum is a particular kind of finite sum of roots of unity, typically
In mathematics the Function Field Sieve is one of the most efficient algorithms to solve the Discrete Logarithm Problem (DLP) in a finite field. It has heuristic subexponential complexity. Leonard Adleman developed it in 1994 and then elaborated it together with M. D. Huang in 1999. Previous work includes the work of D. Coppersmith about the DLP in fields of characteristic two.
