Hypergeometric functions over ${\mathbb {F}_p}$ and relations to elliptic curves and modular forms

Abstract

For primes p ≡ 1 (mod 12), we present an explicit relation between the traces of Frobenius on a family of elliptic curves with j-invariant 1728 / t and values of a particular 2 F 1 -hypergeometric function over F p . We also give a formula for traces of Hecke operators on spaces of cusp forms of weight k and level 1 in terms of the same traces of Frobenius. This leads to formulas for Ramanujan's T -function in terms of hypergeometric functions.