An explicit Pólya-Vinogradov inequality via Partial Gaussian sums

Abstract

In this paper we obtain a new fully explicit constant for the Pólya-Vinogradov inequality for squarefree modulus. Given a primitive character χ \chi to squarefree modulus q q , we prove the following upper bound: | ∑ 1 ⩽ n ⩽ N χ ( n ) | ⩽ c q log ⁡ q , \begin{align*} \left | \sum _{1 \leqslant n\leqslant N} \chi (n) \right |\leqslant c \sqrt {q} \log q, \end{align*} where c = 1 / ( 2 π 2 ) + o ( 1 ) c=1/(2\pi ^2)+o(1) for even characters and c = 1 / ( 4 π ) + o ( 1 ) c=1/(4\pi )+o(1) for odd characters, with an explicit o ( 1 ) o(1) term. This improves a result of Frolenkov and Soundararajan for large q q . We proceed via partial Gaussian sums rather than the usual Montgomery and Vaughan approach of exponential sums with multiplicative coefficients. This allows a power saving on the minor arcs rather than a factor of log ⁡ q \log {q} as in previous approaches and is an important factor for fully explicit bounds.