Critical points of the classical Eisenstein series of weight two

TL;DR

This paper thoroughly characterizes the critical points of the Eisenstein series E_2, revealing their distribution within fundamental domains and connecting them to geometric and Green function degeneracy curves.

Contribution

It provides a complete determination of the critical points of E_2, including criteria for their location and a geometric interpretation of their distribution.

Findings

E_2 has at most one critical point per fundamental domain of Γ₀(2).

Critical points can be mapped into a basic fundamental domain and are densely on three smooth curves.

These curves coincide with degeneracy curves of trivial critical points of a related Green function.

Abstract

In this paper, we completely determine the critical points of the normalized Eisenstein series $E_2(\tau)$ of weight $2$. Although $E_2(\tau)$ is not a modular form, our result shows that $E_2(\tau)$ has at most one critical point in every fundamental domain of $\Gamma_{0}(2)$. We also give a criteria for a fundamental domain containing a critical point of $E_2(\tau)$. Furthermore, under the M\"obius transformation of $\Gamma_{0}(2)$ action, all critical points can be mapped into the basic fundamental domain $F_0$ and their images are contained densely on three smooth curves. A geometric interpretation of these smooth curves is also given. It turns out that these smooth curves coincide with the degeneracy curves of trivial critical points of a multiple Green function related to flat tori.