Congruences between derivatives of abelian L-functions at s=0

• DOI: 10.1007/s00222-007-0052-3
• Publication Date: 2007-06-05T13:37:15Z
• Authors: David Burns
• Keywords: Congruence relation

Let K/k be a finite abelian extension of global fields. We prove that a natural equivariant leading term conjecture implies a family of explicit congruence relations between the values at s=0 of derivatives of the Dirichlet L-functions associated to K/k. We also show that these congruences provide a universal approach to the ‘refined abelian Stark conjectures’ formulated by, inter alia, Stark, Gross, Rubin, Popescu and Tate. We thereby obtain the first proofs of, amongst other things, the Rubin–Stark conjecture and the ‘refined class number formulas’ of both Gross and Tate for all extensions K/k in which K is either an abelian extension of ℚ or is a function field.