The first moment of central values of symmetric square <Emphasis Type="Italic">L</Emphasis>-functions in the weight aspect

We establish an asymptotic formula with arbitrary power saving for the first moment of the symmetric square L-functions \(L(s,\mathrm{sym}^2f)\) at \(s=\frac{1}{2}\) for \(f\in \mathcal {H}_k\) as even \(k\rightarrow \infty \), where \(\mathcal {H}_k\) is an orthogonal basis of weight-k Hecke eigen cusp forms for \(SL(2,\mathbb {Z})\). The approach taken allows us to extract two secondary main terms from the best-known error term \(O(k^{-\frac{1}{2}})\). Moreover, our result exhibits a connection between the symmetric square L-functions and quadratic fields, which is the main theme of Zagier’s work Modular forms whose coefficients involve zeta-functions of quadratic fields in 1977.