Elliptic functions, Green functions and the mean field equations on tori

Abstract

We show that the Green functions on flat tori can have either 3 or 5 critical points only. There does not seemto be any directmethod to attack this problem. Instead, we have to employ sophisticated non-linear partial differential equations to study it. We also study the distribution of number of critical points over the moduli space of flat tori through deformations. The functional equations of special theta values provide important inequalities which lead to a solution for all rhombus tori.