Large sieve and its applications : arithmetic geometry, random walks and discrete groups

Includes index

Includes bibliography (p. 283-288) and references

1. Introduction; 2. The principle of the large sieve; 3. Group and conjugacy sieves; 4. Elementary and classical examples; 5. Degrees of representations of finite groups; 6. Probabilistic sieves; 7. Sieving in discrete groups; 8. Sieving for Frobenius over finite fields

Among the modern methods used to study prime numbers, the 'sieve' has been one of the most efficient. Originally conceived by Linnik in 1941, the 'large sieve' has developed extensively since the 1960s, with a recent realisation that the underlying principles were capable of applications going well beyond prime number theory. This book develops a general form of sieve inequality, and describes its varied applications, including the study of families of zeta functions of algebraic curves over finite fields; arithmetic properties of characteristic polynomials of random unimodular matrices; homological properties of random 3-manifolds; and the average number of primes dividing the denominators of rational points on elliptic curves.