Sums of algebraic trace functions twisted by arithmetic functions

Abstract

We obtain new bounds for short sums of isotypic trace functions associated to some sheaf modulo prime $p$ of bounded conductor, twisted by the Mobius function and also by the generalised divisor function. These trace functions include Kloosterman sums and several other classical number theoretic objects. Our bounds are nontrivial for intervals of length at least $p^{1/2+\varepsilon}$ with an arbitrary fixed $\varepsilon >0$, which is shorter than the length at least $p^{3/4+\varepsilon}$ in the case of the Mobius function and at least $p^{2/3+\varepsilon}$ in the case of the divisor function required in recent results of {É}.~Fouvry, E.~Kowalski and P.~Michel (2014) and E.~Kowalski, P. ~Michel and W.~Sawin (2018), respectively.