Computing isolated coefficients of the $j$-function

Abstract

We consider the problem of efficiently computing isolated coefficients $c_n$ in the Fourier series of the elliptic modular function $j(\tau)$. We show that a hybrid numerical-modular method with complexity $n^{1+o(1)}$ is efficient in practice. As an application, we locate the first few values of $c_n$ that are prime, the first occurring at $n = 457871$.