Digit permutations revisited

Abstract

We discuss here characteristic $p$ $L$-series as well as the group $S_{(q)}$ which appears to act as symmetries of these functions. We explain various actions of $S_{(q)}$ that arise naturally in the theory as well as extensions of these actions. In general such extensions appear to be highly arbitrary but in the case where the zeroes are unramified, the extension is unique (and it is reasonable to expect it is unique only in this case). Having unramified zeroes is the best one could hope for in finite characteristic and appears to be an avatar of the Riemann hypothesis in this setting; see Section [8] for a more detailed discussion.