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# Elliptic Selberg Integrals

Departement Mathematik, ETH-Zentrum, 8092 Zürich, Switzerland,

felder@math.ethz.ch

Department of Mathematics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill,

Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3250, USA,

stevens@math.unc.edu, av@math.unc.edu

March, 2001

The Selberg integral is

$`B_p(\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma )={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{\Delta }_p}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{p}{}}}t_j^{\alpha 1}(1t_j)^{\beta 1}{\displaystyle \underset{0j<k1}{}}(t_jt_k)^{2\gamma },`$
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }_p=\{t^p|\mathrm{\hspace{0.17em}0}t_p\mathrm{}t_11\}.`$ The Selberg integral is a generalization of the beta function. It can be calculated explicitly,

$`B_p(\alpha ,\beta ,\gamma )={\displaystyle \frac{1}{p!}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=0}{\overset{p1}{}}}{\displaystyle \frac{\mathrm{\Gamma }(1+\gamma +j\gamma )\mathrm{\Gamma }(\alpha +j\gamma )\mathrm{\Gamma }(\beta +j\gamma )}{\mathrm{\Gamma }(1+\gamma )\mathrm{\Gamma }(\alpha +\beta +(p+j1)\gamma )}}.`$
The Selberg integral has many applications, see \[A1, A2, As, D, DF1, DF2, M, S\]. In this paper, we present an elliptic version of the Selberg integral.

Let $`\vartheta _1(t,\tau )`$ be the first Jacobi theta function \[WW\],

$`\vartheta _1(t,\tau )={\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}e^{\pi i(j+\frac{1}{2})^2\tau +2\pi i(j+\frac{1}{2})(t+\frac{1}{2})}.`$
Introduce special functions

$`\sigma _\lambda (t,\tau )={\displaystyle \frac{\vartheta _1(\lambda t,\tau )\vartheta _1^{}(0,\tau )}{\vartheta _1(\lambda ,\tau )\vartheta _1(t,\tau )}},\rho (t,\tau )={\displaystyle \frac{\vartheta _1^{}(t,\tau )}{\vartheta _1(t,\tau )}},E(t,\tau )={\displaystyle \frac{\vartheta _1(t,\tau )}{\vartheta _1^{}(0,\tau )}}.`$
Here  denotes the derivative with respect to the first argument.

Let $`\kappa 2`$ be an integer. The theta functions

$`\theta _{\kappa ,m}(\lambda ,\tau )={\displaystyle \underset{j}{}}e^{2\pi i\kappa (j+\frac{m}{2\kappa })^2\tau +2\pi i\kappa (j+\frac{m}{2\kappa })\lambda },m/2\kappa ,`$
form a basis of the theta functions of level $`\kappa `$.

For a positive integer $`p`$, the elliptic Selberg integral $`I_p(\lambda ,\tau )`$ is the integral,

$`I_p(\lambda ,\tau )=J_p(\lambda ,\tau )+(1)^{p+1}J_p(\lambda ,\tau ),`$
where

$`J_p(\lambda ,\tau )={\displaystyle _{\mathrm{\Delta }_p}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{p}{}}}E(t_j,\tau )^{\frac{p}{p+1}}{\displaystyle \underset{1j<kp}{}}E(t_jt_k,\tau )^{\frac{1}{p+1}}`$ $`\times `$
$`{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{p}{}}}\sigma _\lambda (t_j,\tau )\theta _{2(p+1),p+1}(\lambda +{\displaystyle \frac{1}{p+1}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{p}{}}}t_j,\tau )`$ $`dt_1\mathrm{}dt_p.`$
The branch of the logarithm is chosen in such a way that arg $`(E(t,\tau ))0`$ as $`t0^+`$, and the integral is understood as a natural analytic continuation.111To define the analytic continuation, we replace the exponential $`\frac{p}{p+1}`$ by $`a`$, and consider the analytic continuation with respect to $`a`$ from the region where $`a`$ is positive.

###### Theorem 1.

We have

(1) $`I_p(\lambda ,\tau )=c_pB_p({\displaystyle \frac{1}{2}}+{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2(p+1)}},{\displaystyle \frac{p}{p+1}},{\displaystyle \frac{1}{2(p+1)}})\vartheta _1(\lambda ,\tau )^{p+1}`$
where

$`c_p=(2\pi )^{\frac{p}{2}}e^{\pi i\frac{p}{p+1}}e^{\pi i\frac{p+2}{4}}{\displaystyle \underset{j=1}{\overset{p}{}}}\left(1e^{\pi i\frac{j}{p+1}}\right).`$
The theorem is a generalization of theorem $`13`$ in \[FV1\]. The proof is based on the following remarks. Consider the heat equation

$`4\pi i(p+1){\displaystyle \frac{u}{\tau }}(\lambda ,\tau )={\displaystyle \frac{^2u}{\lambda ^2}}(\lambda ,\tau )+p(p+1)\rho ^{}(\lambda ,\tau )u(\lambda ,\tau ).`$
It is known that this equation has a one dimensional space of solutions $`u(\lambda ,\tau )`$ which are holomorphic theta functions of level $`2(p+1)`$,

$`u(\lambda +2,\tau )=u(\lambda ,\tau ),u(\lambda +2\tau ,\tau )=e^{4\pi i(p+1)(\lambda +\tau )}u(\lambda ,\tau )`$
and Weyl skew-symmetric, $`u(\lambda ,\tau )=(1)^{p+1}u(\lambda ,\tau )`$, see \[FV1, FV2\]. The space is called the space of conformal blocks. Clearly the right hand side of (1) has these properties. According to \[FV1\], the left hand side of (1) also has these properties. Thus the two functions are proportional. The coefficient of proportionality is easily calculated in the limit $`\tau i\mathrm{}`$.