Bilinear Kloosterman sums in function fields and the distribution of irreducible polynomials

Abstract Inspired by the work of Bourgain and Garaev (2013), we provide new bounds for certain weighted bilinear Kloosterman sums in polynomial rings over a finite field. As an application, we build upon and extend some results of Sawin and Shusterman (2022). These results include bounds for exponential sums weighted by the Möbius function and a level of distribution for irreducible polynomials beyond 1/2, with arbitrary composite modulus. Additionally, we can do better when averaging over the modulus, to give an analogue of the Bombieri-Vinogradov Theorem with a level of distribution even further beyond 1/2.