Understanding sum of Dirichlet characters

analytic-number-theorydirichlet-characternumber theory

I'm trying to understand how Dirichlet Characters work, especially the sum of Dirichlet Characters.
Concerning the definitions, we have:
$\chi : G \longrightarrow \mathbb{C} ^{\times}$ is a homomorphism from a group $G$ to $\mathbb{C} ^{\times}$. These homomorphisms are called characters of $G$. $\widehat{G}$ denotes the set of all characters of $G$.

Now, is it given that $G$ is always cyclic, or are there cases where $G$ is not cyclic?

I have a lemma in my textbook (Multiplicative Number Theory I. Classical Theory by Montgomery H.L., Vaughan R.C., lemma 4.2, page 115) that states that for $G$ cyclic og order $n$, and $G$ generated by $a$, there are exactly $n$ characters of $G$, namely $\chi_k(a^m)=e(km/n)$ for $1\leq k \leq n$. But it's not clear to me what the expression $e(km/n)$ means. This is important for me to understand in order to show the rest of the lemma, which states:

$\sum_{g\in G}\chi (g) = \{n \text{ if } \chi=\chi_0 \text{ and } 0 \text{ otherwise }\} $

and

$\sum_{\chi \in \widehat{G}}\chi (g) = \{n \text{ if } g=e \text{ and } 0 \text{ otherwise }\} $

$\chi_0$ is the principal character.

If someone knows an easy-to-understand introduction to Dirichlet Characters, please point me in that direction.

Best Answer

Let $\chi$ be an arbitrary character of $G$ and $a$ be $G$'s generator, then we have

$$ \chi(a^n)=1=\chi(a)^n $$

Since $\chi$ is a homomorphism from $G$ into the complex domain, we know that the above equation has $n$ solutions, each of them being the $n$'th root of unity. Thus using the notation $e(s)=e^{2\pi is}$ we can rewrite the character as

$$ \chi_k(a)=e(k/n) $$

where $k=0,1,2,\dots,n-1$. This indicates that there are exactly $n$ characters in a cyclic group of order $n$. Moreover, we know that the character maps the group into the unit circle of complex plane.

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