Modular forms and three-loop superstring amplitudes Original Research Article

We study a proposal of DʹHoker and Phong for the chiral superstring measure for genus three. A minor modification of the constraints they impose on certain Siegel modular forms leads to a unique solution. We reduce the problem of finding these modular forms, which depend on an even spin structure, to finding a modular form of weight 8 on a certain subgroup of the modular group. An explicit formula for this form, as a polynomial in the even theta constants, is given. We checked that our result is consistent with the vanishing of the cosmological constant. We also verified a conjecture of DʹHoker and Phong on modular forms in genus 3 and 4 using results of Igusa.