The distribution of Euler-Kronecker constants of quadratic fields

Abstract

We investigate the distribution of large positive (and negative) values of the Euler-Kronecker constant $\gamma_{\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt D)}$ of the quadratic field $\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt{D})$ as $D$ varies over fundamental discriminants $|D|\leq x$. We show that the distribution function of these values is very well approximated by that of an adequate probabilistic random model in a large uniform range. The main tools are an asymptotic formula for the Laplace transform of $\gamma_{\mathbb{Q}(\sqrt D)}$ together with a careful saddle point analysis.