Rationality of the periods of Eisenstein series

Abstract

The article generalizes an observation of Zagier and Gangl to show that the image of the spectral Eisenstein series on a general congruence subgroup of $\text{SL}_2(\mathbb{Z})$, under the Eichler-Shimura isomorphism, is defined over a cyclotomic number field. We use the same technique to generalize an invariant attached to imaginary quadratic fields in connection with the polylogarithm conjecture on the special values of $L$-functions. Our treatment also provides an elementary derivation of the Fourier expansion of the Maass Eisenstein series on congruence subgroups presented as a power series.