Eisenstein Series in Ramanujan's Lost Notebook

Abstract

In his lost notebook, Ramanujan stated without proofs several beautifulidentities for the three classsical Eisenstein series (in Ramanujan's notation) P(q), Q(q), and R(q). The identities are given in terms of certain quotients of Dedekind eta-functions called Hauptmoduls. These identities were first proved by S. Raghavan and S.S. Rangachari, but their proofs used the theory of modular forms, with which Ramanujan was likely unfamiliar. In this paper we prove all these identities by using classical methods which would have been well known to Ramanujan. In fact, all our proofs use only results from Ramanujan's notebooks.