Moments of traces of random symplectic matrices and hyperelliptic $L$-functions

We study matrix integrals of the form $$\int_{\mathrm{USp(2n)}}\prod_{j=1}^k\mathrm{tr}(U^j)^{a_j}\mathrm d U,$$ where $a_1,\ldots,a_r$ are natural numbers and integration is with respect to the Haar probability measure. We obtain a compact formula (the number of terms depends only on $\sum a_j$ and