On the zeta function of divisors for projective varieties with higher rank divisor class group

Given a projective variety X defined over a finite field, the zeta function of divisors attempts to count all irreducible, codimension one subvarieties of X, each measured by their projective degree. When the dimension of X is greater than one, this is a purely p-adic function, convergent on the open unit disk. Four conjectures are expected to hold, the first of which is p-adic meromorphic continuation to all of C_p. When the divisor class group (divisors modulo linear equivalence) of X has rank one, then all four conjectures are known to be true. In this paper, we discuss the higher rank case. In particular, we prove a p-adic meromorphic continuation theorem which applies to a large class of varieties. Examples of such varieties are projective nonsingular surfaces defined over a finite field (whose effective monoid is finitely generated) and all projective toric varieties (smooth or singular).Comment: Significant Improvements. 13 page

Meromorphy of the rank one unit root L-function revisited

We demonstrate that Wan's alternate description of Dwork's unit root L-function in the rank one case may be modified to give a proof of meromorphy that is classical, eliminating the need to study sequences of uniform meromorphic functions.Comment: 9 page

Families of generalized Kloosterman sums

We construct p-adic relative cohomology for a family of toric exponential sums which generalize the classical Kloosterman sums. Under natural hypotheses such as quasi-homogeneity and nondegeneracy, this cohomology is acyclic except in the top dimension. Our construction enables sufficiently sharp estimates for the action of Frobenius on cohomology so that our earlier work may be applied to the L-functions coming from linear algebra operations on these families to deduce a number of basic properties.Comment: 36 pages, 4 figure