We prove that if $k$ and $\ell$ are sufficiently large, then all the zeros of the weight $k+\ell$ cusp form $E_{k}(z)E_{\ell }(z)-E_{k+\ell }(z)$ in the standard fundamental domain lie on the boundary. We, moreover, find formulas for the number of zeros on the bottom arc with $|z|=1$, and those on the sides with $Re(z)=\pm 1/2$. One important ingredient of the proof is an approximation of the Eisenstein series in terms of the Jacobi theta function.

For a half-integral weight modular form $f=\sum _{n=1}^{\infty }a_{f}(n)n^{(k-1)/2}q^{n}$ of weight $k=\ell +1/2$ on $\unicode[STIX]{x1D6E4}_{0}(4)$ such that $a_{f}(n)$ ( $n\in \mathbb{N}$ ) are real, we prove for a fixed suitable natural number $r$ that $a_{f}(n)$ changes sign infinitely often as $n$ varies over numbers having at most $r$ prime factors, assuming the analog of the Ramanujan conjecture for Fourier coefficients of half-integral weight forms.

While investigating the Doi–Naganuma lift, Zagier defined integral weight cusp forms $f_D$ which are naturally defined in terms of binary quadratic forms of discriminant $D$. It was later determined by Kohnen and Zagier that the generating function for the function $f_D$ is a half-integral weight cusp form. A natural preimage of $f_D$ under a differential operator at the heart of the theory of harmonic weak Maass forms was determined by the first two authors and Kohnen. In this paper, we consider the modularity properties of the generating function of these preimages. We prove that although the generating function is not itself modular, it can be naturally completed to obtain a half-integral weight modular object.

We describe an algorithm for enumerating the set of level one systems of Hecke eigenvalues arising from modular forms (mod $p$).

Supplementary materials are available with this article.

We generalise works of Kobayashi to give a formulation of the Iwasawa main conjecture for modular forms at supersingular primes. In particular, we give analogous definitions of the plus and minus Coleman maps for normalised new forms of arbitrary weights and relate Pollack’s p-adic L-functions to the plus and minus Selmer groups. In addition, by generalising works of Pollack and Rubin on CM elliptic curves, we prove the ‘main conjecture’ for CM modular forms.

Holomorphic almost modular forms are holomorphic functions of the complex upper half plane that can be approximated arbitrarily well (in a suitable sense) by modular forms of congruence subgroups of large index in ${\rm SL}(2,{\mathbb Z})$. It is proved that such functions have a rotation-invariant limit distribution when the argument approaches the real axis. An example of a holomorphic almost modular form is the logarithm of $\prod_{n=1}^\infty (1-\exp(2\pi\i n^2 z))$. The paper is motivated by the author's previous studies [Int. Math. Res. Not. 39 (2003) 2131–2151] on the connection between almost modular functions and the distribution of the sequence $n^2x$ modulo one.