Evaluation of Dedekind sums, Eisenstein cocycles, and special values of L-functions

Abstract

We define certain higher-dimensional Dedekind sums that generalize the classical Dedekind-Rademacher sums, and show how to compute them effectively using a generalization of the continued-fraction algorithm. We present two applications. First, we show how to express special values of partial zeta functions associated to totally real number fields in terms of these sums via the Eisenstein cocycle introduced by the second author. Hence we obtain a polynomial-time algorithm for computing these special values. Second, we show how to use our techniques to compute certain special values of the Witten zeta-function, and compute some explicit examples.