Aspects of Hecke Symmetry: Anomalies, Curves, and Chazy Equations

Abstract

We study various relations governing quasi-automorphic forms associated to discrete subgroups of ${\rm SL}(2,\mathbb{R}) $ called Hecke groups. We show that the Eisenstein series associated to a Hecke group ${\rm H}(m)$ satisfy a set of $m$ coupled linear differential equations, which are natural analogues of the well-known Ramanujan identities for quasi-modular forms of ${\rm SL}(2,\mathbb{Z})$. Each Hecke group is then associated to a (hyper-)elliptic curve, whose coefficients are determined by an anomaly equation. For the $m=3$ and $4$ cases, the Ramanujan identities admit a natural geometric interpretation as a Gauss-Manin connection on the parameter space of the elliptic curve. The Ramanujan identities also allow us to associate a nonlinear differential equation of order $ m $ to each Hecke group. These equations are higher-order analogues of the Chazy equation, and we show that they are solved by the quasi-automorphic Eisenstein series $E_2^{(m)}$ associated to ${\rm H}(m) $ and its orbit under the Hecke group. We conclude by demonstrating that these nonlinear equations possess the Painlev\'e property.