Nonvanishing for cubic L-functions

Abstract

Abstract We prove that there is a positive proportion of L-functions associated to cubic characters over $\mathbb F_q[T]$ that do not vanish at the critical point $s=1/2$ . This is achieved by computing the first mollified moment using techniques previously developed by the authors in their work on the first moment of cubic L-functions, and by obtaining a sharp upper bound for the second mollified moment, building on work of Lester and Radziwiłł, which in turn develops further ideas from the work of Soundararajan, Harper and Radziwiłł. We work in the non-Kummer setting when $q\equiv 2 \,(\mathrm {mod}\,3)$ , but our results could be translated into the Kummer setting when $q\equiv 1\,(\mathrm {mod}\,3)$ as well as into the number-field case (assuming the generalised Riemann hypothesis). Our positive proportion of nonvanishing is explicit, but extremely small, due to the fact that the implied constant in the upper bound for the mollified second moment is very large.