The twisted mean square and critical zeros of Dirichlet $L$-functions

Abstract

In this work, we obtain an asymptotic formula for the twisted mean square of a Dirichlet $L$-function with a longer mollifier, whose coefficients are also more general than before. As an application we obtain that, for every Dirichlet $L$-function, more than 41.72\% of zeros are on the critical line and more than 40.74\% of zeros are simple and on the critical line. These proportions also improve previous results which were proved only for the Riemann zeta-function.