Symplectic conjectures for sums of divisor functions and explorations of an orthogonal regime

Abstract

In [arXiv:2107.01437], the authors studied the mean-square of certain sums of the divisor function $d_k(f)$ over the function field $\mathbb{F}_q[T]$ in the limit as $q \to \infty$ and related these sums to integrals over the ensemble of symplectic matrices, along similar lines as previous work of Keating, Rodgers, Roditty-Gershon and Rudnick [arXiv:1504.07804] for unitary matrices. We present an analogous problem yielding an integral over the ensemble of orthogonal matrices and pursue a more detailed study of both the symplectic and orthogonal matrix integrals, relating them to symmetric function theory. The function field results lead to conjectures concerning analogous questions over number fields.