Bilinear forms with Kloosterman sums and applications

Abstract

We prove non-trivial bounds for general bilinear forms in hyper-Kloosterman sums when the sizes of both variables may be below the P\'olya-Vinogradov range. We then derive applications to the second moment of holomorphic cusp forms twisted by characters modulo primes, and to the distribution in arithmetic progressions to large moduli of certain Eisenstein-Hecke coefficients on $\GL_3$. Our main tools are new bounds for certain complete sums in three variables over finite fields, proved using methods from algebraic geometry, especially $\ell$-adic cohomology and the Riemann Hypothesis.