Average values of L-functions in characteristic two Original Research Article

Gauss made two conjectures about average values of class numbers of orders in quadratic number fields, later on proven by Lipschitz and Siegel. A version for function fields of odd characteristic was established by Hoffstein and Rosen. In this paper, we extend their results to the case of even characteristic. More precisely, we obtain formulas of average values of L-functions associated to orders in quadratic function fields over a constant field of characteristic two, and then derive formulas of average class numbers of these orders.