Primes represented by quadratic forms and the Weil abscissa of abelian profinite groups

Abstract

Here we show that the Weil abscissa of the procyclic groups $\prod_{p \in S} \mathbb{Z}_p$ equals $2$ for three sets $S$: (i) the set of primes $p \equiv 1 \bmod 3$, (ii) the set of primes $p \equiv 1 \bmod 4$ and (iii) the set of primes $p \equiv 1,3 \bmod 8$. Our argument is based on the observation that integers all of whose prime factors lie in $S$ can be represented by a suitable binary quadratic form, which allows us to use a theorem of Iwaniec to exhibit a minorant for the Weil representation zeta function.