Some observations on the arithmetic of Eisenstein series for the modular group \(\text{SL}(2,\mathbb{Z})\) (Q5946015)

For \(k \geq 4\), let \(\varphi_k(X)\) be the monic polynomial whose roots are the \(j\)-invariants (\(j \neq 0, 1728\)) of the zeros of the Eisenstein series of weight \(k\) for \(\text{SL}(2,{\mathbb{Z}})\). It is shown that the denominator \(N_k\) of \(\varphi_k\) equals the numerator of \(B_k/2k\), where \(B_k\) is the \(k\)-th Bernoulli number. Let \(\varphi_k^\sim\) denote \(\varphi_k\bmod p\) for \(p-1|k\) and \(-B_k/2k \cdot \varphi_k\bmod p\) otherwise. A formula for \(\varphi_k^\sim(X)\) is given as a product of \(\varphi_l^\sim(X)\) (for \(l\) the representative of \(k\) in \(\{0,4,6,\dots,p-3,p+1\}\)) and well-determined powers of \(\varphi_{p-1}^\sim(X), X\) and \(X-1728\). The author then announces the congruence \[ E_{k+12} = E_k E_{12}\bmod 2^7 \cdot 3^4 \cdot 5^3 \cdot 7^2 \cdot 13 \] (to appear in ``A series of new congruences for Bernoulli numbers and Eisenstein series''), which implies a similar congruence for the polynomials \(\varphi_k\). These results are applied to prove that certain integers divide the discriminant of the polynomial \(N_k \varphi_k\). The paper finishes with some calculations and conjectures about the polynomials \(\varphi_k\) and their discriminants, which shows they seem to behave analogous to orthogonal polynomials (although they are not such).