Class invariants and cyclotomic unit groups from special values of modular units . par Amanda

In this article we obtain class invariants and cyclotomic unit groups by considering specializations of modular units. We construct these modular units from functional solutions to higher order q-recurrence equations given by Selberg in his work generalizing the Rogers-Ramanujan identities. As a corollary, we provide a new proof of a result of Zagier and Gupta, originally considered by Gauss, regarding the Gauss periods. These results comprise part of the author’s 2006 Ph.D. thesis [6] in which the structure of these modular unit groups and their associated cuspidal divisor class groups are also characterized, and a cuspidal divisor class number formula is given in terms of products of Lfunctions and compared to the classical relative class number formula within the cyclotomic fields [6, 7].