TITLE: Hecke equidistribution
QUESTION [21 upvotes]: For a prime $p\equiv 1\pmod{4}$, we can write $p=a^2+b^2=N(a+bi)$. Therefore
$$
a+bi=p^{1/2}e^{i\varphi}
$$
where $\varphi\in [0,2\pi]$. I know that Hecke proved that $\varphi$ is equidistributed. I am looking for a reference for this nice result. I would be thankful if one can give me a reference.

REPLY [16 votes]: A very down-to-earth treatment of this result of Hecke is in Chapter 5 of the nice book Geometric and Analytic Number Theory, by Hlawka, Schoißengeier, and Taschner. By down-to-earth, I mean that they deal directly with this specific case of Hecke's result, and that they prove it using very little -- the method is a modification of the Korevaar--Newman--Zagier approach to the prime number theorem, and so doesn't need any quantitative zero-free region (just a statement that there are no zeros of the appropriate objects on the line $\Re(s)=1$).