Modularity from $q$-series
Abstract
In 1975, G. E. Andrews challenged the mathematics community to address L. Ehrenpreis' problem, which was to directly prove the modularity of the Rogers-Ramanujan -series' summatory forms. This question is important because many different -series appearing in combinatorics, representation theory, and physics often seem to be mysteriously modular, yet there is no general test to confirm this directly from the exotic -series expressions. In this note, we answer the challenge. We use -series algebra, first-order -differential systems, and analytic continuation with monodromy to give a criterion that decides when such series are modular. Specifically, we establish a necessary and sufficient condition for a vector of holomorphic -series on to form a vector-valued modular function without modular input, providing a clear path to modularity for strange -series.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2509.20316,
title = {Modularity from $q$-series},
author = {Ken Ono},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2509.20316},
year = {2026}
}
Comments
Minor revisions based on referee's comments. Clarifying clearly that the proof of Theorem 4 doesn't depend on the Jacobi Triple Product or modularity in a hidden way