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Some Results in the Theory of Low-lying Zeros: Determining the 1-level density, identifying the group symmetry and the arithmetic of moments of Satake parameters

While Random Matrix Theory has successfully modeled many quantities of families of L-functions, it frequently cannot see the family's arithmetic. In some situations this requires an extended theory that inserts arithmetic factors depending on the family, while in other cases these factors result in contributions which vanish in the limit, and are thus not detected. We review the general theory associated to one of the most important statistics, the n-level density of zeros near the central point. According to the Katz-Sarnak density conjecture, to each family of L-functions there is a corresponding symmetry group such that the behavior of zeros near the central point as the conductors tend to infinity agrees with the behavior of eigenvalues near 1 as the matrix size tends to infinity. We show how these calculations are done, emphasizing the techniques, methods and obstructions to improving the results, by considering in full detail a family of Dirichlet characters. We then describe how we may associate a symmetry constant to each family, and how to determine the symmetry group of a compound family in terms of the symmetries of the constituents. These calculations explain the remarkable universality of behavior, where the main terms are independent of the arithmetic (only the first two moments of the Satake parameters contribute in the limit; similar to the Central Limit Theorem, the higher moments are only felt in the rate of convergence). We end by exploring lower order terms in families of elliptic curves. We present evidence supporting a conjecture that the average second moment in one-parameter families without complex multiplication has, when appropriately viewed, a negative bias, and end with a discussion of the consequences of this bias on the distribution of low-lying zeros, in particular relations between such a bias and the observed excess rank in families.