Large character sums: Pretentious characters and the Pólya-Vinogradov theorem

Abstract

In 1918 Pólya and Vinogradov gave an upper bound for the maximal size of character sums, which still remains the best known general estimate. One of the main results of this paper provides a substantial improvement of the Pólya-Vinogradov bound for characters of odd, bounded order. In 1977 Montgomery and Vaughan showed how the Pólya-Vinogradov inequality may be sharpened assuming the Generalized Riemann Hypothesis. We give a simple proof of their estimate and provide an improvement for characters of odd, bounded order. The paper also gives characterizations of the characters for which the maximal character sum is large, and it finds a hidden structure among these characters.