Elliptic Genera of Symmetric Products and Second Quantized Strings

In this note we prove an identity that equates the elliptic genus partition function of a supersymmetric sigma model on the N-fold symmetric product $M^N/S_N$ of a manifold M to the partition function of a second quantized string theory on the space $M \times S^1$. The generating function of these elliptic genera is shown to be (almost) an automorphic form for O(3,2,Z). In the context of D-brane dynamics, this result gives a precise computation of the free energy of a gas of D-strings inside a higher-dimensional brane.Comment: 17 pages, latex, 1 figure, to appear in Commun. Math. Phy

A new construction of Eisenstein's completion of the Weierstrass zeta function

In the theory of elliptic functions and elliptic curves, the Weierstrass $zeta$ function (which is essentially an antiderivative of the Weierstrass $\wp$ function) plays a prominent role. Although it is not an elliptic function, Eisenstein constructed a simple (non-holomorphic) completion of this form which is doubly periodic. This theorem has begun to play an important role in the theory of harmonic Maass forms, and was crucial to work of Guerzhoy as well as Alfes, Griffin, Ono, and the author. In particular, this simple completion of $\zeta$ provides a powerful method to construct harmonic Maass forms of weight zero which serve as canonical lifts under the differential operator $\xi_{0}$ of weight 2 cusp forms, and this has been shown in to have deep applications to determining vanishing criteria for central values and derivatives of twisted Hasse-Weil $L$-functions for elliptic curves. Here we offer a new and motivated proof of Eisenstein's theorem, relying on the basic theory of differential operators for Jacobi forms together with a classical identity for the first quasi-period of a lattice. A quick inspection of the proof shows that it also allows one to easily construct more general non-holomorphic elliptic functions.Comment: 3 pages, minor additions and correction

Classification of totally real elliptic Lefschetz fibrations via necklace diagrams

We show that totally real elliptic Lefschetz fibrations that admit a real section are classified by their "real loci" which is nothing but an $S^1$-valued Morse function on the real part of the total space. We assign to each such real locus a certain combinatorial object that we call a \emph{necklace diagram}. On the one hand, each necklace diagram corresponds to an isomorphism class of a totally real elliptic Lefschetz fibration that admits a real section, and on the other hand, it refers to a decomposition of the identity into a product of certain matrices in $PSL(2,\Z)$. Using an algorithm to find such decompositions, we obtain an explicit list of necklace diagrams associated with certain classes of totally real elliptic Lefschetz fibrations. Moreover, we introduce refinements of necklace diagrams and show that refined necklace diagrams determine uniquely the isomorphism classes of the totally real elliptic Lefschetz fibrations which may not have a real section. By means of necklace diagrams we observe some interesting phenomena underlying special feature of real fibrations.Comment: 25 pages, 30 figure

Black Hole Entropy Associated with Supersymmetric Sigma Model

By means of an identity that equates elliptic genus partition function of a supersymmetric sigma model on the $N$-fold symmetric product $S^N X$ of $X$ ($S^N X=X^N/S_N$, $S_N$ is the symmetric group of $N$ elements) to the partition function of a second quantized string theory, we derive the asymptotic expansion of the partition function as well as the asymptotic for the degeneracy of spectrum in string theory. The asymptotic expansion for the state counting reproduces the logarithmic correction to the black hole entropy.Comment: 11 pages, no figures, version to appear in the Phys. Rev. D (2003