General derivative Thomae formula for singular half-periods (Q2224499)

\textit{J. Thomae} [J. Reine Angew. Math. 71, 201--222 (1870; JFM 02.0244.01)] established two formulae, now named after him, involving theta functions on hyper-elliptic Riemann surfaces. The first one concerns non-vanishing theta constants at simple even characteristics, and the second one evaluates the derivatives at odd characteristics of order 1. Recently some generalizations of Thomae formulae were proved, in several directions. The generalization established in this paper is still in the realm of hyper-elliptic Riemann surfaces, but considers characteristics of any order, and the derivatives of the appropriate order of the corresponding theta functions. Once the classical formula for the theta constants is known, the way to prove the additional ones (which was essentially the way Thomae already did it) is by finding a relation between two theta functions, one with a non-vanishing constant and another one of the appropriate order, expressing them using theta identities (obtained by comparing divisors), and differentiating it in the appropriate coordinates at the appropriate point. This is also the path this paper takes. The final formula involves sums of products of symmetric functions in branching values. Using these formulae, one can extract, at least for low orders, the values of these symmetric functions in branching values, and obtain them as quotients between appropriate theta derivatives, generalizing Bolza's classical formula. The paper contains several examples of such formulae and applications, as well as an additional conjectural formula for an arbitrary theta derivative using tensors. The paper is divided into 5 sections. Section 1 is the Introduction. Section 2 presents differentials on hyper-elliptic Riemann surfaces, theta and sigma functions, and the classical Thomae formulae. Section 3 states and proves the main theorem, i.e., the formula for any \(m\)th derivative of a theta function of characteristic of order \(m\) on a hyper-elliptic Riemann surface. Section 4 provides some explicit examples and draws the generalized Bolza formula from them, and Section 5 is a short conclusion.