Murmurations of Dirichlet characters

Abstract: We calculate murmuration densities for two families of Dirichlet characters. The first family contains complex Dirichlet characters normalized by their Gauss sums. Integrating the first density over a geometric interval yields a murmuration function compatible with experimental observations. The second family contains real Dirichlet characters weighted by a smooth function with compact support. We show that the second density exhibits a universality property analogous to Zubrilina's density for holomorphic newforms, and it interpolates the phase transition in the the $1$-level density for a symplectic family of $L$-functions.