In this talk I will first remind how to derive the Ramanujan relations between Eisenstein series and the
Darboux-Halphen differential equation from the Gauss-Manin connection of families of elliptic curves.
Then I will explain a generalization of this fact in the case of Calabi-Yau threefolds. In this way one gets an algebra
which generalizes the algebra of quasi-modular forms. Genus g topological string partition functions turn
out to be elements of this new algebra and the corresponding Bershadsky-Cecotti-Ooguri-Vafa anomaly equation
can be written in terms of certain vector fields derived from the Gauss-Manin connection. The talk is based on
the papers arXiv:1111.0357 [4] and arXiv:1110.3664 [5] and a joint work under preparation with
M. Alim, E. Scheidegger, S.T. Yau.
Links:
[1] http://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/taxonomy/term/39
[2] http://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/node/3444
[3] http://www.mpim-bonn.mpg.de/node/5312
[4] http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.0357
[5] http://arxiv.org/abs/1110.3664