Several measures for the density of sets of integers have been proposed, such as the asymptotic density, the Schnirelmann density, and the Dirichlet density. There has been some work in the literature on extending some of these concepts of density to higher dimensional sets of integers. In this work, we propose an extension of the Dirichlet density for sets of Gaussian integers and investigate some of its properties.

Let K be a function field over finite field ${\Bbb F}_q$ and let ${\Bbb A}$ be a ring consisting of elements of K regular away from a fixed place ∞ of K. Let φ be a Drinfeld ${\Bbb A}$-module defined over an ${\Bbb A}$-field L. In the case where L is a finite ${\Bbb A}$-field, we study the characteristic polynomial $P$φ(X) of the geometric Frobenius. A formula for the sign of the constant term of $P$φ(X) in terms of ‘leading coefficient’ of φ is given. General formula to determine signs of other coefficients of $P$φ(X) is also derived. In the case where L is a global ${\Bbb A}$-field of generic characteristic, we apply these formulae to compute the Dirichlet density of places where the Frobenius traces have the maximal possible degree permitted by the ‘Riemann hypothesis’.