On a lattice generalisation of the logarithm and a deformation of the Dedekind eta function

Abstract

We consider a deformation $E_{L,\Lambda }^{(m)}(it)$ of the Dedekind eta function depending on two $d$-dimensional simple lattices $(L,\Lambda )$ and two parameters $(m,t)\in (0,\infty )$, initially proposed by Terry Gannon. We show that the minimizers of the lattice theta function are the maximizers of $E_{L,\Lambda }^{(m)}(it)$ in the space of lattices with fixed density. The proof is based on the study of a lattice generalization of the logarithm, called lattice-logarithm, also defined by Terry Gannon. We also prove that the natural logarithm is characterized by a variational problem over a class of one-dimensional lattice-logarithm.

7 pages. Accepted in Bulletin of the Australian Mathematical Society