Thomae formulae for general fully ramified \(Z_n\) curves (Q2358383)

To each closed Riemann surface \(X\), of genus \(g\), there is associated its Jacobian variety \(JX\), this being a \(g\)-dimensional principally polarized abelian variety. By fixing a canonical basis for its homology, there is a symmetric, \(g \times g\), matrix \(\Pi\) whose imaginary part is positive definite; called a period matrix of \(X\). The quotient torus \({\mathbb C}^{g}/({\mathbb Z}^{g} \oplus \Pi {\mathbb Z}^{g})\) can be identifies with \(JX\). Within this identification, one may construct theta functions (with characteristics \(\varepsilon, \varepsilon' \in {\mathbb R}^{g}\)) \[ \theta\begin{bmatrix} \varepsilon \\ \varepsilon' \end{bmatrix} (\zeta,\Pi)= \] \[ =\sum_{N \in {\mathbb Z}^{g}} \text{Exp}\left[2\pi i \left(\frac{1}{2} \left(N+\frac{\varepsilon}{2}\right)^{t} \Pi \left(N+\frac{\varepsilon}{2}\right) + \left(N+\frac{\varepsilon}{2}\right)^{t} \left(\zeta+\frac{\varepsilon'}{2}\right) \right)\right]. \] When the characteristics are rationals, its values at \(\zeta=0\) are called theta constants. In [\textit{J. Thomae}, J. Reine Angew. Math. 71, 201--222 (1870; JFM 02.0244.01)] it was obtained formulae relating theta constants in the case \(X\) is a hyperelliptic Riemann surface. In later papers these formulae have been generalized to the so called non-singular \({\mathbb Z}_{n}\) curves. The paper under review consider the above for the arbitrary fully ramified \({\mathbb Z}_{n}\) curves (that is, every ramification point has maximal index \(n-1\)); these are represented by algebraic curves of the form \(w^{n}=\prod_{j=1}^{m}(x-a_{j})^{l_{j}}\), where each \(l_{j} \in \{1,\ldots,n-1\}\) is relatively prime with \(n\) and \(l_{1}+\cdots+l_{m}\) is either divisible by \(n\) or its is relatively prime to it. The main point in the paper is the construction of certain non-special divisors on \(X\), supported at fixed points of the automorphism \(\tau(x,w)=(x,e^{2 \pi i/n} w)\), and to consider certain powers of theta functions associated to such divisors. There is provided the details and computations needed to obtain the formulae. Also, it ends with a section concerning open questions and some conjectures.