Mean square values of L-functions over subgroups for nonprimitive characters, Dedekind sums and bounds on relative class numbers

Abstract An explicit formula for the mean value of $\vert L(1,\chi )\vert ^2$ is known, where $\chi $ runs over all odd primitive Dirichlet characters of prime conductors p. Bounds on the relative class number of the cyclotomic field ${\mathbb Q}(\zeta _p)$ follow. Lately, the authors obtained that the mean value of $\vert L(1,\chi )\vert ^2$ is asymptotic to $\pi ^2/6$ , where $\chi $ runs over all odd primitive Dirichlet characters of prime conductors $p\equiv 1\ \ \pmod {2d}$ which are trivial on a subgroup H of odd order d of the multiplicative group $({\mathbb Z}/p{\mathbb Z})^*$ , provided that $d\ll \frac {\log p}{\log \log p}$ . Bounds on the relative class number of the subfield of degree $\frac {p-1}{2d}$ of the cyclotomic field ${\mathbb Q}(\zeta _p)$ follow. Here, for a given integer $d_0>1$ , we consider the same questions for the nonprimitive odd Dirichlet characters $\chi '$ modulo $d_0p$ induced by the odd primitive characters $\chi $ modulo p. We obtain new estimates for Dedekind sums and deduce that the mean value of $\vert L(1,\chi ')\vert ^2$ is asymptotic to $\frac {\pi ^2}{6}\prod _{q\mid d_0}\left (1-\frac {1}{q^2}\right )$ , where $\chi $ runs over all odd primitive Dirichlet characters of prime conductors p which are trivial on a subgroup H of odd order $d\ll \frac {\log p}{\log \log p}$ . As a consequence, we improve the previous bounds on the relative class number of the subfield of degree $\frac {p-1}{2d}$ of the cyclotomic field ${\mathbb Q}(\zeta _p)$ . Moreover, we give a method to obtain explicit formulas and use Mersenne primes to show that our restriction on d is essentially sharp.