Write and use the Serre derivative . Translation invariance of and the Eisenstein series of weight two gives .
Differentiate the weight- transformation . The chain rule yields
The assumed transformation of the Eisenstein series of weight two gives
Subtracting cancels the extra term. Hence . Since and generate the modular group, these two transformations prove the weight- law for all its elements. Holomorphy on the complex upper half-plane follows from the formula.
For the Fourier expansion of a modular form , differentiation gives . The product of the convergent series for and likewise has no negative powers. Thus is holomorphic at a cusp at infinity, and therefore at every cusp of the modular group. Its constant coefficient is . Since , it vanishes exactly when . Consequently
Apply the Serre derivative in weight twelve to the modular discriminant. The preceding result makes a weight-fourteen cusp form. The vanishing of weight-fourteen level-one cusp forms follows directly from the valence formula for the modular group: a nonzero such form has order at infinity at least one, and forces order at at least one. Thus its weighted number of zeros would be at least , a contradiction. Therefore .
Compare the Fourier coefficients at positive indices using and . This gives . For the Ramanujan tau function, the concise recurrence is
At the sum is empty and both sides are zero; normalization supplies . For instance the next coefficient is .
Ramanujan tau function 2026-10-05
The Ramanujan tau function gives the Fourier coefficients at positive indices of the modular discriminant: , with . The Serre derivative and vanishing of weight-fourteen level-one cusp forms give and hence the convolution recurrence