Harmonic Maass form explained

f

on the upper half plane, transforming like a modular form under the action of the modular group, being an eigenfunction of the corresponding hyperbolic Laplace operator, and having at most linear exponential growth at the cusps. If the eigenvalue of

f

under the Laplacian is zero, then

f

is called a harmonic weak Maass form, or briefly a harmonic Maass form.

A weak Maass form which has actually moderate growth at the cusps is a classical Maass wave form.

The Fourier expansions of harmonic Maass forms often encode interesting combinatorial, arithmetic, or geometric generating functions. Regularized theta lifts of harmonic Maass forms can be used to construct Arakelov Green functions for special divisors on orthogonal Shimura varieties.

Definition

A complex-valued smooth function

f

on the upper half-plane is called a weak Maass form of integral weight (for the group) if it satisfies the following three conditions:

(1) For every matrix

\begin{pmatrix}a&b\c&d\end{pmatrix}\inSL(2,Z)

the function

f

satisfies the modular transformation law
f\left(az+b
cz+d

\right)=(cz+d)kf(z).

(2)

f

is an eigenfunction of the weight hyperbolic Laplacian

\Deltak=-y2\left(

\partial2
\partialx2

+

\partial2
\partialy2

\right)+iky\left(

\partial
\partialx

+i

\partial
\partialy

\right),

where

z=x+iy.

(3)

f

has at most linear exponential growth at the cusp, that is, there exists a constant such that as

y\toinfty.

If

f

is a weak Maass form with eigenvalue 0 under

\Deltak

, that is, if

\Deltakf=0

, then

f

is called a harmonic weak Maass form, or briefly a harmonic Maass form.

Basic properties

Every harmonic Maass form

f

of weight

k

has a Fourier expansion of the form

f(z)=

\sum\nolimits
n\geqn+

c+(n)qn+

\sum\nolimits
n\leqn-

c-(n)\Gamma(1-k,-4\piny)qn,

where, and

n+,n-

are integers depending on

f.

Moreover,
infty
\Gamma(s,y)=\int
y

ts-1e-tdt

denotes the incomplete gamma function (which has to be interpreted appropriately when). The first summand is called the holomorphic part, and the second summand is called the non-holomorphic part of

f.

There is a complex anti-linear differential operator

\xik

defined by

\xik(f)(z)=2iyk\overline{

\partial
\partial\barz

f(z)}.

Since

\Deltak=-\xi2-k\xik

, the image of a harmonic Maass form is weakly holomorphic. Hence,

\xik

defines a map from the vector space

Hk

of harmonic Maass forms of weight

k

to the space
!
M
2-k
of weakly holomorphic modular forms of weight

2-k.

It was proved by Bruinier and Funke (for arbitrary weights, multiplier systems, and congruence subgroups) that this map is surjective. Consequently, there is an exact sequence

0\to

!
M
k

\toHk\to

!\to
M
2-k

0,

providing a link to the algebraic theory of modular forms. An important subspace of

Hk

is the space
+
H
k
of those harmonic Maass forms which are mapped to cusp forms under

\xik

.

If harmonic Maass forms are interpreted as harmonic sections of the line bundle of modular forms of weight

k

equipped with the Petersson metric over the modular curve, then this differential operator can be viewed as a composition of the Hodge star operator and the antiholomorphic differential. The notion of harmonic Maass forms naturally generalizes to arbitrary congruence subgroups and (scalar and vector valued) multiplier systems.

Examples

E2(z)=1-

3
\piy
infty
-24\sum
n=1

\sigma1(n)qn

of weight 2 is a harmonic Maass form of weight 2.

\xi3/2

is a non-zero multiple of the Jacobi theta function

\theta(z)=\sumn\in

n2
q

.

History

The above abstract definition of harmonic Maass forms together with a systematic investigation of their basic properties was first given by Bruinier and Funke. However, many examples, such as Eisenstein series and Poincaré series, had already been known earlier. Independently, Zwegers developed a theory of mock modular forms which also connects to harmonic Maass forms.

An algebraic theory of integral weight harmonic Maass forms in the style of Katz was developed by Candelori.

Works cited

Further reading