New generalisation of Jacobi's derivative formula (Q2146474)

Jacobi's derivative formula expresses the odd theta derivative of degree 1 as a product of the three even theta constants. Recently, this formula was generalized in several directions, from rational characteristics to higher degree theta functions. In higher degrees, when the theta function arises from a hyper-elliptic Riemann surface, the non-vanishing even theta constants can be expressed using the first Thomae formula, and the second Thomae formula concerns the first derivatives of odd theta constants of degree 1. A previous paper by the author constructed Thomae-like formulae for the first non-vanishing theta derivative of any characteristic. The current paper applies this result for obtaining formulae for such derivatives in terms of the theta constants themselves, thus generalizing Jacobi's derivative formula to this setting. In addition, Schottky proved several relations involving theta functions, both for characterizing the Jacobian locus inside the moduli space of Abelian varieties, and for distinguishing the hyper-elliptic locus in both. This paper establishes yet another relation of Schottky type among theta constants. In more detail, the first and second Thomae formulae can be merged to express the non-vanishing simple theta derivatives in terms of theta constants, and symmetric functions in the branching values associated with the characteristics involved. Using the Thomae formula of higher order, similar expressions, involving also differences of branching values, can be obtained for the higher order theta derivatives. Additional results, about the rank of collections of such derivatives (viewed as matrices of the appropriate sizes) are also established. These are proved explicitly up to order three, and are conjectured to follow the same pattern in any order. The formula involves a tensor of theta constants, whose degree is the order of vanishing of the characteristic in question. The properties of these tensors in rank 2 (i.e., when they are matrices) are applied for proving the Schottky type relation. Some proofs are postponed to appendices, and other appendices also contain numerical examples. The paper is divided into 5 sections plus 5 appendices. Section 1 is the Introduction, and Section 2 introduces the required preliminaries about hyper-elliptic Riemann surfaces, their theta functions, and the Thomae formulae. Section 3 presents the results about theta derivatives and generalizations of Jacobi's formula, and Section 4 proves the Schottky type relation. Section 5 is a short conclusions section. Appendices A and D detail explicit examples of the theta derivative formulae (of orders 1 and 2 respectively) in low genera, and Appendices B and C contain proofs of some propositions from the paper itself. Finally, Appendix E gives examples of the relations of Schottky type in low genera.