Abstract:
To date, the bestmethodsfor estimating the growth of mean values of arithmetic functions rely on the Voronoï summation formula. By noticing a general pattern in the proof of his summation formula, Voronoï postulated that analogous summation formulas for ∑a(n)f(n) can be obtained with ‘nice’ test functions f(n), provided a(n) is an ‘arithmetic function’. These arithmetic functions a(n) are called so because they are expected to appear as coefficients of some L-functions satisfying certain properties. It has been well-known that the functional equation for a general L-function can be used to derive a Voronoï-type summation identity for that L-function. In this article, we show that such a Voronoï-typesummation identity in fact endows the L-function with some structural properties, yielding in particular the functional equation. We do this by considering Dirichlet series satisfying functional equations involving multiple Gamma factors and show that a given arithmetic function appears as a coefficient of such a Dirichlet series if and only if it satisfies the aforementioned summation formulas.