Can you recommend some books on elliptic function?
I plan to study elliptic function. Can you recommend some books? What is the relationship between elliptic function and elliptic curve？Many thanks in advance!
McKean and Moll have written the nice book Elliptic Curves: Function Theory, Geometry, Arithmetic that cleanly illustrates the connection between elliptic curves and elliptic/modular functions. If you haven't seen the book already, you should.
As for elliptic functions proper, my suggested books tend to be a bit on the old side, so pardon me if I don't know the newer treatments. Anyway, I quite liked Lawden's Elliptic Functions and Applications and Akhiezer's Elements of the Theory of Elliptic Functions. An oldie but goodie is Greenhill's classic, The Applications of Elliptic Functions; the notation is a bit antiquated, but I have yet to see another book that has a wide discussion of the applications of elliptic functions to physical problems.
At one time... every young mathematician was familiar with $\mathrm{sn}\,u$, $\mathrm{cn}\,u$, and $\mathrm{dn}\,u$, and algebraic identities between these functions figured in every examination.
– E.H. Neville
Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention the venerable Abramowitz and Stegun, and the successor work, the DLMF. The chapters on the Jacobi and Weierstrass elliptic functions give a nice overview of the most useful identities, and also point to other fine work on the subject.
First of all
- ever-modern Course of modern analysis by Whittaker-Watson.
For a more introductory style, I highly recommend
- V. Prasolov, Y. Solovyev Elliptic Functions and Elliptic Integrals.
The relation between elliptic curves and elliptic functions can be sketched as follows. Elliptic curve is topologically a torus which can be realized by cutting a parallelogram in $\mathbb{C}$ and identifying its opposite edges. On the other hand, it can be realized in $\mathbb{CP}^2$ by an algebraic equation of the form $$y^2=x^3+ax+b.$$ Elliptic functions provide a map between the two pictures, which is also called uniformization. Essentially, $x,y$ are given by some elementary elliptic functions of $z$ (complex coordinate on the parallelogram).
Compare this with a more familiar example: trigonometric functions $\sin$, $\cos$ provide a uniformization of the circle, which can be defined either via an algebraic equation or in a parametric form: $$x^2+y^2=1\quad \begin{array}{c}\sin,\cos\\ \Longleftrightarrow \\ \;\end{array}\quad \begin{cases}x=\cos t,\\ y=\sin t,\\ t\in[0,2\pi].\end{cases}$$
There is a classical 3 volume series by C.L. Siegel. It is well-written, though the perspective is a little bit outdated. I guess (no book at hand) you can find treatments by Serge Lang in the GTM series as well. I am not sure if Stein's book on complex analysis studied this topic.