The Ramanujan differential operator, a certain CM elliptic curve and Kummer congruences

Abstract

Let $\tau$ be a point in the upper half-plane such that the elliptic curve corresponding to $\tau$ can be defined over $\mathbb{Q}$, and let f be a modular form on the full modular group with rational Fourier coefficients. By applying the Ramanujan differential operator D to f, we obtain a family of modular forms D^lf. In this paper we study the behavior of $D^l(f)(\tau)$ modulo the powers of a prime p > 3. We show that for $p \equiv 1 \bmod 3$ the quantities $D^l(f)(\tau)$, suitably normalized, satisfy Kummer-type congruences, and that for $p \equiv 2 \bmod 3$ the p-adic valuations of $D^l(f)(\tau)$ grow arbitrarily large. We prove these congruences by making a connection with a certain elliptic curve whose reduction modulo p is ordinary if $p \equiv 1 \bmod 3$ and supersingular otherwise.