The Jacobi orientation and the two-variable elliptic genus (Q2426841)

In this text, the authors give a conceptual treatment of the two-variable elliptic genus. This has been studied by many people before, see for example the book [\textit{F. Hirzebruch, T. Berger}, and \textit{R. Jung}, Manifolds and modular forms. Transl. by Peter S. Landweber. Wiesbaden: Friedr. Vieweg (1992; Zbl 0767.57014)], but here the authors make contact with stable homotopy theory, where genera appear as orientations: maps of ring spectra from Thom spectra to other spectra, which refine the underlying maps on coefficients from bordism rings to other rings. In the case of elliptic genera, this enrichment is due to the first author together with \textit{M. J. Hopkins} and \textit{N. P. Strickland} [Invent. Math. 146, No.~3, 595--687 (2001; Zbl 1031.55005)], who have shown that for every elliptic spectrum \((E,C,\gamma)\) there exists an orientation~\(MU\langle6\rangle\rightarrow E\), the \(\sigma\)-orientation, which evaluates to the Witten genus on the Tate spectrum. Naturality of the construction in \(E\) proves the modularity of the latter. In the present work, the authors construct from this a Jacobi orientation \(MSU=MU\langle4\rangle\rightarrow E\mathcal{J}_C\), where \(E\mathcal{J}_C\) is the base change of~\(E\) to~\(C\setminus0\), such that it evaluates to the two-variable elliptic genus on the Tate spectrum. Again, naturality of the construction in \(E\) proves the modularity of the latter. The final section, which is independent of the previous line of thought, shows that the two-variable elliptic genus also arises as an instance of the twisted circle-equivariant Witten genus.