Zeta statistics and Hadamard functions

We introduce the Hadamard topology on the Witt ring of rational functions, giving a simultaneous refinement of the weight and point-counting topologies. Zeta functions of algebraic varieties over finite fields are elements of the rational Witt ring, and the Hadamard topology allows for a conjectural unification of results in arithmetic and motivic statistics: The completion of the Witt ring for the Hadamard topology can be identified with a space of meromorphic functions which we call Hadamard functions, and we make the meta-conjecture that any “natural” sequence of zeta functions which converges to a Hadamard function in both the weight and point-counting topologies converges also in the Hadamard topology. For statistics arising from Bertini problems, zero-cycles or the Batyrev-Manin conjecture, this yields an explicit conjectural unification of existing results in motivic and arithmetic statistics that were previously connected only by analogy. As evidence for our conjectures, we show that Hadamard convergence holds for many natural statistics arising from zero-cycles, as well as for the motivic height zeta function associated to the motivic Batyrev-Manin problem for split toric varieties.