The theory of supercharacters, which generalizes classical character theory, was recently introduced by P. Diaconis and I.M. Isaacs, building upon earlier work of C. Andre. We study supercharacter theories on $(Z/nZ)^d$ induced by the actions of certain matrix groups, demonstrating that a variety of exponential sums of interest in number theory (e.g., Gauss, Ramanujan, Heilbronn, and Kloosterman sums) arise in this manner. We develop a generalization of the discrete Fourier transform, in which supercharacters play the role of the Fourier exponential basis. We provide a corresponding uncertainty principle and compute the associated constants in several cases.
Comment: 20 pages, 6 figures. To appear in J. Number Theory