Spherical designs and modular forms of the $D_4$ lattice

In this paper, we study shells of the $D_4$ lattice with a {slight generalization} of spherical $t$-designs due to Delsarte-Goethals-Seidel, namely, the spherical design of harmonic index $T$ (spherical $T$-design for short) introduced by Delsarte-Seidel. We first observe that{, for any positive integer $m$,} the $2m$-shell of $D_4$ is an antipodal spherical $\{10,4,2\}$-design on the three dimensional sphere. We then prove that the $2$-shell, which is the $D_4$ root system, is a tight $\{10,4,2\}$-design, using the linear programming method. The uniqueness of the $D_4$ root system as an antipodal spherical $\{10,4,2\}$-design with 24 points is shown. We give two applications of the uniqueness: a decomposition of the shells of the $D_4$ lattice in terms of orthogonal transformations of the $D_4$ root system, and the uniqueness of the $D_4$ lattice as an even integral lattice of level 2 in the four dimensional Euclidean space. We also reveal a connection between the harmonic strength of the shells of the $D_4$ lattice and non-vanishing of the Fourier coefficients of a certain newform of level 2. Motivated by this, congruence relations for the Fourier coefficients are discussed.