This project was sponsored through the Schiff Fellowship program of Brandeis University. This project involved using the power series method to construct a third order nonlinear ordinary differential equation, a Schwarzian equation, for each of the "genus zero" modular functions, described in the Conway-Norton paper. We first use the Borcherd recursion formuli to generate, in each case, a modular function up to whatever degree we desire, and then use the fact that there is a Schwarzian equation, determined by a single rational function we call a Q-value. By similar power series methods, we compute the coefficients of our rational function, and hence have all the necessary data to create a Schwarzian differential equation for each modular function. This equation can, in turn, be used to recover the modular function itself.

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We calculate a G_2-period of a Fourier coefficient of a cuspidal Eisenstein series on the split simply-connected group E_6, and relate this period to the Ginzburg-Rallis period of cusp forms on GL_6. This gives us a relation between the Ginzburg-Rallis period and the central value of the exterior cube L-function of GL_6.

We analyze the asymptotic behavior of certain twisted orbital integrals arising from the study of affine Deligne-Lusztig varieties. The main tools include the Base Change Fundamental Lemma and q-analogues of the Kostant partition functions. As an application we prove a conjecture of Miaofen Chen and Xinwen Zhu, relating the set of irreducible components of an affine Deligne-Lusztig variety modulo the action of the σ-centralizer group to the Mirkovic-Vilonen basis of a certain weight space of a representation of the Langlands dual group.

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