On the Theory of Automorphic Functions

Abstract

We know that the elliptic modular function j(z) gives the birational invariant of the elliptic curve with the analytic modulus z, and that the elliptic modular functions belonging to the congruence-subgroups are obtained from the values of elliptic functions at the points of finite order on elliptic curves. This is not only the origin of those functions, but one of the most essential points to which we may ascribe the significance of elliptic modular functions in number-theory. It is important to generalize these facts, namely, to investigate in a more general case the relation between automorphic functions with one or more variables and systems of algebraic varieties, especially, systems of abelian varieties. The object of this paper is to give some results on this subject. We shall deal with certain systems of polarized abelian varieties parametrized by holomorphic functions and show that there exist meromorphic functions whose values are considered as of the members of the systems (Theorem 1). The theory developed here will be chiefly concerned with systems of abelian varieties with non-trivial endomorphisms, since I have already given elsewhere a theory for Siegel's modular functions [11]. I am particularly interested, in the present paper, in the determination of the fields of definition for fields of automorphic functions. This is the first problem which confronts us when we proceed beyond a formal treatment in the arithmetic theory of automorphic functions. We obtain a criterion (Theorem 2) applicable even in the case of compact fundamental domain where one can not employ Fourier expansions. The last part of the paper is devoted to the theory of a certain type of automorphic functions of one variable known in the literature as functions belonging to indefinite ternary quadratic forms [8], [5]; they occur as moduli of abelian varieties of dimension 2 whose endomorphismrings are isomorphic to an order of an indefinite quaternion algebra. We get in this case the field of rational numbers as a field of definition for the function-field. We can also prove the congruence formulae for the modular correspondences, which give a generalization of what is obtained in [3], [10]. We shall treat these formulae in a subsequent paper together with the theory of the functions belonging to congruence-subgroups. Our method can be applied to other types of automorphic functions, for example, to Hilbert's modular functions, by considering a system of