Generating Picard modular forms by means of invariant theory

Abstract

We use the description of the Picard modular surface for discriminant $-3$ as a moduli space of curves of genus $3$ to generate all vector-valued Picard modular forms from bi-covariants for the action of ${GL}_2$ on the space of pairs of binary forms of bidegree $(4,1)$. The universal binary forms of degree $4$ and $1$ correspond to a meromorphic modular form of weight $(4,-2)$ and a holomorphic Eisenstein series of weight $(1,1)$.