Abstract:
Sums of Dirichlet characters are one of the most studied objects in analytic number theory.
In this talk I will describe some work on the distribution of
$$
\sum\limits_{x\,<\,n\,\leqslant\,x+H}\chi(n),
$$
where $\chi$ is a non-principal character $\mod{q}$ and $x$ varies between $0$ and $q-1$.
This problem was investigated by Davenport and Erdös, and more recently by Lamzouri and others.
Lamzouri conjectured that provided
$$
H\to\infty, \quad\text{but}\quad H = o\left(\frac{q}{\log{q}}\right),
$$
the sum should have a Gaussian limiting distribution.
I will present some results that shed more light on this conjecture.