Ramanujan's partition generating functions modulo $\ell$

Abstract

For the partition function $p(n)$, Ramanujan proved the striking identities $$ P_5(q):=\sum_{n\geq 0} p(5n+4)q^n =5\prod_{n\geq 1} \frac{\left(q^5;q^5\right)_{\infty}^5}{(q;q)_{\infty}^6}, $$ $$ P_7(q):=\sum_{n\geq 0} p(7n+5)q^n =7\prod_{n\geq 1}\frac{\left(q^7;q^7\right)_{\infty}^3}{(q;q)_{\infty}^4}+49q \prod_{n\geq 1}\frac{\left(q^7;q^7\right)_{\infty}^7}{(q;q)_{\infty}^8}, $$ where $(q;q)_{\infty}:=\prod_{n\geq 1}(1-q^n).$ As these identities imply his celebrated congruences modulo 5 and 7, it is natural to seek, for primes $\ell \geq 5,$ closed form expressions of the power series $$ P_{\ell}(q):=\sum_{n\geq 0} p(\ell n-\delta_{\ell})q^n\pmod{\ell}, $$ where $\delta_{\ell}:=\frac{\ell^2-1}{24}.$ In this paper, we prove that $$ P_{\ell}(q)\equiv c_{\ell} \frac{T_{\ell}(q)}{ (q^\ell; q^\ell )_\infty} \pmod{\ell}, $$ where $c_{\ell}\in \mathbb{Z}$ is explicit and $T_{\ell}(q)$ is the generating function for the Hecke traces of $\ell$-ramified values of special Dirichlet series for weight $\ell-1$ cusp forms on $SL_2(\mathbb{Z})$. This is a new proof of Ramanujan's congruences modulo 5, 7, and 11, as there are no nontrivial cusp forms of weight 4, 6, and 10.