An explicit Pólya-Vinogradov inequality via Partial Gaussian sums

Abstract

In this paper we obtain a new fully explicit constant for the Pólya-Vinogradov inequality for squarefree modulus. Given a primitive character $\chi$ to squarefree modulus $q$, we prove the following upper bound \begin{align*} \left| \sum_{1 \le n\le N} χ(n) \right|\le c \sqrt{q} \log q, \end{align*} where $c=1/(2{\pi }^2)+o(1)$ for even characters and $c=1/(4\pi )+o(1)$ for odd characters, with an explicit $o(1)$ term. This improves a result of Frolenkov and Soundararajan for large $q$. We proceed via partial Gaussian sums rather than the usual Montgomery and Vaughan approach of exponential sums with multiplicative coefficients. This allows a power saving on the minor arcs rather than a factor of $\log q$ as in previous approaches and is an important factor for fully explicit bounds.