Put and . Separate the terms in the lattice Eisenstein series. Differentiating the cosecant partial-fraction identity times gives, for ,
The initial identity is ; differentiation accounts for the factorial and the sign. Pair and and collect the products . Absolute convergence of the lattice sum for , and local uniform convergence of the resulting power series, justify these operations. Thus the requested Fourier expansions are
Here , and the Bernoulli numbers have convention . The second formula uses Euler's even-value identity for the Riemann zeta function, . In particular and .
We need the rational, rather than merely complex, version of the polynomial ring of level-one modular forms. Recall how the valence formula for the modular group supplies its proof. For a nonzero weight- modular form, with ,
Integrate around a truncated standard fundamental domain of the modular group, indenting around boundary zeros. The paired vertical sides cancel by translation; pair the two halves of the circular edge using . The logarithmic derivative of supplies , while the top edge supplies . The half-disc and third-disc at the two elliptic points account for the fractions . The argument principle then gives the formula. All orders in it are nonnegative for a holomorphic modular form. It follows that negative weights have no forms, , and : a weight-two form vanishes at , contributing at least .
Define . It is a weight-twelve cusp form and its expansion starts with . The valence formula for the modular group forces its order at infinity to be exactly one and leaves no interior zeros. Thus division by identifies with . Every nonnegative even has a monomial of weight : solve , taking when is even and when it is odd and at least three. Subtract the constant coefficient of a modular form times such a monomial and divide by . Induction on weight proves generation by .
If the original Fourier coefficients are rational, every step preserves rationality: both generators and have rational expansions, and formal division by does too. This proves the rational structure of level-one modular forms. Write with and . Rescaling gives
The Bernoulli number formula above makes each zeta ratio rational: its powers of cancel precisely because the weights agree. This proves the required rational coefficients for the unnormalized lattice Eisenstein sums.
Finally because the quotient weights are negative, and because . In each of these weights a form is determined by its constant coefficient. The indicated monomials have that coefficient equal to one, so
Let be the upper half-plane and put . A weight- modular form for the modular group is a holomorphic function on satisfying
whose Fourier expansion at the modular cusp at infinity has only nonnegative powers of . These functions form the vector space . Its subspace consists of the cusp forms, whose constant Fourier coefficient is zero. For the full modular group every cusp is equivalent to infinity, so this is the complete cusp condition. The matrix gives for odd , and the valence formula for the modular group excludes nonzero forms of negative weight.
The normalized Eisenstein series start as and . Consequently the modular discriminant
is a nonzero cusp form of weight twelve, with order one at infinity. Its contribution there already exhausts the valence formula, so it has no zero in . Multiplication by takes injectively into . Conversely, dividing any member of by is holomorphic in , has weight , and has no negative power at infinity because its numerator vanishes there. Thus multiplication by the modular discriminant gives
The valence formula for the modular group shows that a weight-zero form minus its constant term must vanish: otherwise it would be a cusp form with positive order at infinity and total zero order zero. Hence . A weight-two form satisfies , so any nonzero one would contribute at least to the valence formula, exceeding . Therefore .
Every even integer has a representation with . Indeed, if is even, take ; if it is odd, take and . The form has constant term one. Taking the constant Fourier coefficient therefore maps onto , with kernel . Starting with the negative-weight vanishing and the two initial dimensions gives
and hence the dimension of level-one modular forms is
This also proves finite dimensionality, rather than presupposing it in the recurrence.
For the generation assertion, if has constant coefficient , subtract . The difference is a cusp form, and so equals with . Induction on weight expresses as a polynomial in ; substituting the polynomial expression for does the same for . Constants start the induction, while weight two contributes nothing. The result is a weighted homogeneous polynomial, assigning weights four and six to its variables. In fact the monomials with number exactly the displayed dimension: runs from zero to with parity . Their spanning property therefore makes them a basis in each weight. This identifies the polynomial ring of level-one modular forms: