Wednesday, 24 October 2012

nt.number theory - Generalized quadratic Gauss sums

I was wondering whether anyone knows how to approach the following two
generalizations of the quadratic Gauss sum:



Given integers r,s with gcd(r,s)=1 and integers a,b,N



$F(r,s,N,a,b) = sum_{w = 0}^{rsa}(-1)^{b w}(sinfrac{pi w}{s}) exp(pi i w^2frac{N}{2 rs}) $



$G(r,s,N,a,b) = sum_{w = 0}^{rsa}(-1)^{b w}(sinfrac{pi w}{r})(sinfrac{pi w}{s}) exp(pi i w^2frac{N}{2 rs}) $



Note that removing the sine terms and the sign, setting a = 2, N = 4, r = 1 and s = prime gives the classical quadratic Gauss sum.



Some experimentation suggests that



$F(r,s,N,a,b) = 0$ for all integers b,N, r,s if a is even and (r,s) =1 and



$G(r,s,N,a,b) = 0$ for all a,b,N and r,s with (r,s) =1



Is there a good reason for these sums to vanish? Or a clean proof/reference?



Is it possible to evaluate F in the case a = 1? It seems to be non-zero then.



I tried reducing to the original Gauss sum by completing the square but
this seems to get quite ugly.



More generally, do such Gauss-like sums have a more natural generalization
that turns up somewhere?



Thanks

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