ON A LATTICE GENERALISATION OF THE LOGARITHM AND A DEFORMATION OF THE DEDEKIND ETA FUNCTION

We consider a deformation $E_{L,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}}^{(m)}(it)$ of the Dedekind eta function depending on two $d$-dimensional simple lattices $(L,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC})$ and two parameters $(m,t)\in (0,\infty )$, initially proposed by Terry Gannon. We show that the minimisers of the lattice theta function are the maximisers of $E_{L,\unicode[STIX]{x1D6EC}}^{(m)}(it)$ in the space of lattices with fixed density. The proof is based on the study of a lattice generalisation of the logarithm, called the lattice logarithm, also defined by Terry Gannon. We also prove that the natural logarithm is characterised by a variational problem over a class of one-dimensional lattice logarithms.