The Explicit Hypergeometric-Modularity Method I

Abstract: The theories of hypergeometric functions and modular forms are highly intertwined. For example, particular values of truncated hypergeometric functions and hypergeometric character sums are often congruent or equal to Fourier coefficients of modular forms. In this series of papers, we develop and explore an explicit "Hypergeometric-Modularity" method for associating a modular form to a given hypergeometric datum. In particular, for certain length three and four hypergeometric data we give an explicit method for finding a modular form $f$ such that the corresponding hypergeometric Galois representation has a subrepresentation isomorphic to the Deligne representation of $f$. Our method utilizes Ramanujan's theory of elliptic functions to alternative bases, commutative formal group laws, and supercongruences. As a byproduct, we give a collection of eta quotients with multiplicative coefficients constructed from hypergeometric functions. In the second paper, we discuss a number of applications, including explicit connections between hypergeometric values and periods of these explicit eta quotients as well as evaluation formulae for certain special $L$-values.