A Random Matrix Model for Elliptic Curve L-Functions of Finite Conductor

TL;DR

This paper introduces a random matrix model for elliptic curve L-functions of finite conductor, capturing observed zero repulsion phenomena and aligning well with numerical data.

Contribution

It develops an excised orthogonal ensemble model that accounts for zero repulsion in finite conductor elliptic curve L-functions, extending classical random matrix theory.

Findings

Model reproduces zero repulsion observed numerically.

Explicit calculation of one-level density with a hard gap.

Qualitative and quantitative agreement with number-theoretical data.

Abstract

We propose a random matrix model for families of elliptic curve L-functions of finite conductor. A repulsion of the critical zeros of these L-functions away from the center of the critical strip was observed numerically by S. J. Miller in 2006; such behaviour deviates qualitatively from the conjectural limiting distribution of the zeros (for large conductors this distribution is expected to approach the one-level density of eigenvalues of orthogonal matrices after appropriate rescaling).Our purpose here is to provide a random matrix model for Miller's surprising discovery. We consider the family of even quadratic twists of a given elliptic curve. The main ingredient in our model is a calculation of the eigenvalue distribution of random orthogonal matrices whose characteristic polynomials are larger than some given value at the symmetry point in the spectra. We call this sub-ensemble of SO(2N) the excised orthogonal ensemble. The sieving-off of matrices with small values of the characteristic polynomial is akin to the discretization of the central values of L-functions implied by the formula of Waldspurger and Kohnen-Zagier.The cut-off scale appropriate to modeling elliptic curve L-functions is exponentially small relative to the matrix size N. The one-level density of the excised ensemble can be expressed in terms of that of the well-known Jacobi ensemble, enabling the former to be explicitly calculated. It exhibits an exponentially small (on the scale of the mean spacing) hard gap determined by the cut-off value, followed by soft repulsion on a much larger scale. Neither of these features is present in the one-level density of SO(2N). When N tends to infinity we recover the limiting orthogonal behaviour. Our results agree qualitatively with Miller's discrepancy. Choosing the cut-off appropriately gives a model in good quantitative agreement with the number-theoretical data.