Distribution of points on Abelian covers over finite fields

Abstract

We determine in this paper the distribution of the number of points on the covers of [Formula: see text] such that [Formula: see text] is a Galois extension and [Formula: see text] is abelian when [Formula: see text] is fixed and the genus, [Formula: see text], tends to infinity. This generalizes the work of Kurlberg and Rudnick and Bucur, David, Feigon and Lalin who considered different families of curves over [Formula: see text]. In all cases, the distribution is given by a sum of [Formula: see text] random variables.