Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2002 iii Paper 26 5 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
Let be the constant Fourier coefficient and suppose first that is even and ; thus . Put . The precise Mellin continuation of a noncuspidal modular form isIt is meromorphic on the whole plane, with possible simple poles only at , of residues , respectively. For a cusp form it is an entire function. A nonzero constant term makes both of these poles genuine.
We first justify the initial Mellin transform. Decompose with . For a cusp form, is invariant under the modular group and bounded on its fundamental domain, since it tends to zero at the cusp. Therefore it is bounded throughout the complex upper half-plane. Integrating the Fourier coefficient at height gives . The Eisenstein series coefficients satisfy by replacing divisors by . Consequently , and absolute termwise integration is valid for :Indeed , and the sum of the absolute integrals converges in that half-plane.
Write . Exponential cusp decay of the difference implies uniform convergence on compact subsets of the -plane, including after any number of derivatives in , so is entire. The modular transformation givesOn the lower half of the Mellin integral, subtract the transformed constant explicitly:Substitute in the decaying term and integrate the two powers in the constant term. This yields, initially for ,The right side supplies the claimed meromorphic continuation and its residues. Replacing by and multiplying by , with , leaves this expression unchanged, proving the functional equation with its correct sign. In particular the residue at is tied to the residue at zero by that equation; subtracting only at infinity and overlooking its transformed value at zero would miss these poles.
In weight zero every modular form is constant, so and its completion is identically zero. The same holds for the zero form in odd, negative, or weight-two spaces. Thus the assertion covers all weights in the notation of the paper. There is no conjugation of in this level-one functional equation.