Katz's Sato–Tate conjecture for Kloosterman sums

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Let aa be a non-zero integer. For each prime pp, let θp(a)∈[0,π]\theta_p(a)\in[0,\pi] be the Kloosterman sum angle defined by

p1/2Kl⁡(a;p):=S(a,1;p)=2p1/2cos⁡θp(a).p^{1/2}\operatorname{Kl}(a;p):=S(a,1;p)=2p^{1/2}\cos\theta_p(a).

Katz's Sato–Tate conjecture. For every f∈C([0,π])f\in\mathcal{C}([0,\pi]),

lim⁡x→+∞1π(x)∑p≤xf(θp(a))=2π∫0πf(θ)sin⁡2θ dθ.\lim_{x\rightarrow+\infty}\frac{1}{\pi(x)}\sum_{p\leq x}f\left(\theta_p(a)\right)=\frac{2}{\pi}\int_0^\pi f(\theta)\sin^2\theta\,d\theta.

This conjecture asserts that the Kloosterman sum angles are equidistributed with the Sato–Tate measure. It is presented as the analogue of the Sato–Tate conjecture for elliptic curves and provides the expected distribution underlying sign-change questions for Kloosterman sums.

References

Primary source

Tianping Zhang and Mingxuan Zhong, “Sign changes of Kloosterman sums with moduli having at most six prime factors”, arXiv:2411.13170 (2026).

Additional references

4 papers in this index state this conjecture (2011–2024). The statement above is taken from the most recent of them; the others are arXiv:2406.10106, arXiv:1310.8623, arXiv:1111.5455.

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