On Eisenstein series of half-integral weight (Q1065848)

This paper is a natural continuation of the author's earlier results on Eisenstein series [ibid. 50, 417-476 (1983; Zbl 0519.10019)] to the case of half-integral weight. A new difficulty arising (now) from an apparent ambiguity of a ''theta''-\(factor\) of automorphy \(h_{\gamma}\) occurring in the definition of Eisenstein series of half-integral weight is tackled successfully by invoking Weil's metaplectic group and going over to the adelic framework. The Fourier coefficients of these Eisenstein series turn out to be Euler products whose factors corresponding to archimedean primes are confluent hypergeometric functions while those for non- archimedean primes are infinite series involving Gauss sums associated with quadratic forms and can be ''explicitly'' determined (The author notes that questions raised on such series in the earlier paper - e.g. on p. 451 - have now been settled with the work of P. Feit). An appendix contains a brief exposition of the transformation formula for theta series associated by Siegel to indefinite quadratic forms.