ON THE DENOMINATOR OF DEDEKIND SUMS

It is well known that the denominator of the Dedekind sum s(c, d) divides 2 gcd(d, 3)d and that no smaller denominator independent of c can be expected. In contrast, here we prove that we usually get a smaller denominator in S(H, d), the sum of the s(c, d)’s over all the c’s in a subgroup H of order n > 1 in the multiplicative group (Z/dZ)∗. First, we prove that for p > 3 a prime, the sum 2S(H, p) is a rational integer of the same parity as (p−1)/2. We give an application of this result to upper bounds on relative class numbers of imaginary abelian number fields of prime conductor. Finally, we give a general result on the denominator of S(H, d) for non necessarily prime d’s. We show that its denominator is a divisor of some explicit divisor of 2d gcd(d, 3).