Moments and equidistributions of multiplicative analogues of Kloosterman sums

Abstract

We consider a family of character sums as multiplicative analogues of Kloosterman sums. Using Gauss sums, Jacobi sums and Deligne's bound for hyper-Kloosterman sums, we establish asymptotic formulae for any real (positive) moments of the above character sum as the character runs over all non-trivial multiplicative characters mod $p.$ Moreover, an arcsine law is also established as a consequence of the method of moments. The evaluations of these moments also allow us to obtain asymptotic formulae for moments of such character sums weighted by special $L$-values (at $1/2$ and $1$).