On the interlacing of the zeros of Poincaré series (Q829783)

Let \(\mathbb{H}\) denote the Poincaré upper half plan. For \(z\in\mathbb{H}\) and \(m\in\mathbb{Z}\), the Poincaré series of weight \(k\geq4\) for \(\mathrm{SL}_{2}(\mathbb{Z})\) is defined by \[G_{k}(z,m):=\frac{1}{2}\sum_{\underset{(c,d)=1}{c,d\in\mathbb{Z}}}\frac{e^{2\pi imT(z)}}{(cz+d)^k} \:,\] where \(T=\left(\begin{array}{cc} a & b \\ c & d \end{array}\right)\in\mathrm{SL}_{2}(\mathbb{Z})\) and \(T(z)=\frac{az+b}{cz+d}\cdot\) Let \(m\geq0\) be an integer. \textit{R. A. Rankin} [Compos. Math. 46, 255--272 (1982; Zbl 0493.10034)] proved that all the zeros of \(G_{k}(z,-m)\) in the standard fundamental domain of \(\mathbb{H}\), for the action of \(\mathrm{SL}_{2}(\mathbb{Z})\), lie on the arc \[A=\{|x+iy|=1,\;-\frac{1}{2}\leq x\leq0\}.\] In the paper under review, the authors provide a proof of the above result of Rankin, which inspires to prove interlacing results between the zeros of certain Poincaré series \(G_{k}(z,-m)\). More precisely, let \(0<\varepsilon<\pi/6\) and \(m\geq1\). For \(k\geq4m\pi\) such that \(k\varepsilon^{2}>16\), the zeros of \(G_{k}(z,-m)\) and \(G_{k+12}(z,-m)\) interlace on the set \(A_{\varepsilon}=\{e^{i\theta}\;:\; \pi/2<\theta<2\pi/3-\varepsilon\}\). Furthermore, for a fixed weight \(k\), the authors proved the following statement: Let \(0<\varepsilon<\pi/6\) and \(k\geq12\) be given. Suppose that \(m\geq k\) and \(m\varepsilon^{2}>43\). Then the zeros of \(G_{k}(z,-m)\) and \(G_{k}(z,-m-1)\) interlace on the set \(A_{\varepsilon}=\{e^{i\theta}\;:\; \pi/2<\theta<2\pi/3-\varepsilon\}\). The proofs depend on the determination of the least distance between zeros of cosine functions \(\cos(\frac{k\theta}{2}-2m\pi cos\theta)\) for different values of \(k\) and \(m\). It is likely that the methods used in the paper under review can be used to further investigations for properties of zeros of Poincaré series.