Spherical designs and modular forms of the \(D_4\) lattice (Q6072071)

For \(m>0\), the \(m\)-shell of a lattice is the set of lattice points on the sphere with radius \(\sqrt{m}\). The \(D_4\) lattice is a root lattice in \(4\)-dimensional Euclidean space generated by the permutations of \((\pm 1, \pm 1,0,0)\) over \(\mathbb{Z}.\) The authors study the spherical design of harmonic index \(T\) and prove the following results: the \(2m\)-shell of \(D_4\) is an antipodal spherical \(\{10,4,2\}\) design on the three dimensional sphere; the \(2\)-shell is a tight \(\{10,4,2\}\) design; the \(D_4\) root system is unique as an antipodal spherical \(\{10,4,2\}\) design with \(24\) points; and there is a connection between the harmonic strength of the shells of the \(D_4\) lattice and the non-vanishing of the Fourier coefficient of a certain newform of level 2.