Modular forms in the spectral action of Bianchi IX gravitational instantons

Abstract

Abstract We prove a modularity property for the heat kernel and the Seeley-deWitt coefficients of the heat kernel expansion for the Dirac-Laplacian on the Bianchi IX gravitational instantons. We prove, via an isospectrality result for the Dirac operators, that each term in the expansion is a vector-valued modular form, with an associated ordinary (meromorphic) modular form of weight 2. We discuss explicit examples related to well known modular forms. Our results show the existence of arithmetic structures in Euclidean gravity models based on the spectral action functional.