UBC Number Theory Seminar: Didier Lesesvre

In practice, L-functions appear as generating functions encapsulating information about various objects, such as Galois representations, elliptic curves, arithmetic functions, modular forms, Maass forms, etc. Studying L-functions is therefore of utmost importance in number theory at large. Two of their attached data carry critical information: their zeros, which govern the distributional behavior of underlying objects; and their central values, which are related to invariants such as the class number of a field extension. We discuss a connection between low-lying zeros and central values of L-functions, in particular showing that results about the distribution of low-lying zeros (towards the density conjecture of Katz-Sarnak) implies results about the distribution of the central values (towards the normal distribution conjecture of Keating-Snaith). Even though we discuss this principle in general, we instanciate it in the case of modular forms in the level aspect to give a statement and explain the arguments of the proof.