Depth Two Mock Modularity by Eisenstein Series Coupling

The notion of depth two and higher mock modular forms have found important applications in mathematical physics and enumerative geometry since their inception through indefinite theta functions with general signature.

These theta functions generalize Zwegers' work on Lorentzian signature lattices and the framework of mock modular forms that emanated from it.

Mock modular forms can also be studied through Eisenstein and Poincaré series.

The interaction of this second point of view with the indefinite theta function approach yields a wealth of tools to unearth the rich structure behind mock modular forms.

For mock modular forms of higher depth, on the other hand, indefinite theta functions and their variants largely remained the only available approach.

In this paper, we show that one can indeed get mock modular forms of depth two by "coupling" a pair of Eisenstein series that yield depth one mock modular forms, thereby providing a new and independent approach to higher depth mock modular forms.

We exemplify this new perspective on a depth two object that appeared in the context of Vafa-Witten invariants.