Moments and distribution of central L-values of quadratic twists of elliptic curves

We show that if one can compute a little more than a particular moment for some family of L-functions, then one has upper bounds of the conjectured order of magnitude for all smaller (positive, real) moments and a one-sided central limit theorem holds. We illustrate our method for the family of quadratic twists of an elliptic curve, obtaining sharp upper bounds for all moments below the first. We also establish a one sided central limit theorem supporting a conjecture of Keating and Snaith. Our work leads to a conjecture on the distribution of the order of the Tate-Shafarevich group for rank zero quadratic twists of an elliptic curve, and establishes the upper bound part of this conjecture (assuming the Birch-Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture).Comment: 28 page

Large character sums: Burgess's theorem and zeros of LL-functions

We study the conjecture that $\sum_{n\leq x} \chi(n)=o(x)$ for any primitive Dirichlet character $\chi \pmod q$ with $x\geq q^\epsilon$, which is known to be true if the Riemann Hypothesis holds for $L(s,\chi)$. We show that it holds under the weaker assumption that `$100\%$' of the zeros of $L(s,\chi)$ up to height $\tfrac 14$ lie on the critical line; and establish various other consequences of having large character sums