Covariants of binary sextics and modular forms of degree 2 with character

Abstract

We use covariants of binary sextics to describe the structure of modules of scalar-valued or vector-valued Siegel modular forms of degree 2 with character, over the ring of scalar-valued Siegel modular forms of even weight. For a modular form defined by a covariant we express the order of vanishing along the locus of products of elliptic curves in terms of the covariant.