Some topological genera and Jacobi forms

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Amdeberhan, Tewodros, Griffin, Michael, Ono, Ken
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Amdeberhan, Tewodros
Griffin, Michael
Ono, Ken
author_facet Amdeberhan, Tewodros
Griffin, Michael
Ono, Ken
contents We revisit and elucidate the $\widehat{A}$-genus, Hirzebruch's $L$-genus and Witten's $W$-genus, cobordism invariants of special classes of manifolds. After slight modification, involving Hecke's trick, we find that the $\widehat{A}$-genus and $L$-genus arise directly from Jacobi's theta function. For every $k\geq 0,$ we obtain exact formulas for the quasimodular expressions of $\widehat{A}_k$ and $L_k$ as ``traces'' of partition Eisenstein series \[ \widehat{\mathcal{A}}_k(τ)= \operatorname{Tr}_k(ϕ_{\widehat{A}};τ)\ \ \ \ \ \ {\text {and}}\ \ \ \ \ \ \mathcal{L}_k(τ)= \operatorname{Tr}_k(ϕ_L;τ), \] which are easily converted to the original topological expressions. Surprisingly, Ramanujan defined twists of the $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}_k(τ)$ in his ``lost notebook'' in his study of derivatives of theta functions, decades before Borel and Hirzebruch rediscovered them in the context of spin manifolds. In addition, we show that the nonholomorphic $G_2^{\star}$-completion of the characteristic series of the Witten genus is the Jacobi theta function avatar of the $\widehat{A}$-genus.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2502_02432
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Some topological genera and Jacobi forms
Amdeberhan, Tewodros
Griffin, Michael
Ono, Ken
Number Theory
Algebraic Topology
11F50, 58J20
We revisit and elucidate the $\widehat{A}$-genus, Hirzebruch's $L$-genus and Witten's $W$-genus, cobordism invariants of special classes of manifolds. After slight modification, involving Hecke's trick, we find that the $\widehat{A}$-genus and $L$-genus arise directly from Jacobi's theta function. For every $k\geq 0,$ we obtain exact formulas for the quasimodular expressions of $\widehat{A}_k$ and $L_k$ as ``traces'' of partition Eisenstein series \[ \widehat{\mathcal{A}}_k(τ)= \operatorname{Tr}_k(ϕ_{\widehat{A}};τ)\ \ \ \ \ \ {\text {and}}\ \ \ \ \ \ \mathcal{L}_k(τ)= \operatorname{Tr}_k(ϕ_L;τ), \] which are easily converted to the original topological expressions. Surprisingly, Ramanujan defined twists of the $\widehat{\mathcal{A}}_k(τ)$ in his ``lost notebook'' in his study of derivatives of theta functions, decades before Borel and Hirzebruch rediscovered them in the context of spin manifolds. In addition, we show that the nonholomorphic $G_2^{\star}$-completion of the characteristic series of the Witten genus is the Jacobi theta function avatar of the $\widehat{A}$-genus.
title Some topological genera and Jacobi forms
topic Number Theory
Algebraic Topology
11F50, 58J20
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.02432