The classical Jacobi formula for the elliptic integrals (Gesammelte Werke I, p. 235) shows a relation between Jacobi theta constants and periods of ellptic curves
E(λ):
w2=
z(
z−1)(
z−λ). In other words, this formula says that the modular form ϑ
400(τ) with respect to the principal congruence subgroup Γ(2) of
PSL(2,
Z) has an expression by the Gauss hypergeometric function
F(1⁄2,1⁄2,1;1−λ) via the inverse of the period map for the family of elliptic curves
E(λ) (see Theorem 1.1). In this article we show a variant of this formula for the family of Picard curves
C(λ
1,λ
2):
w3=
z(
z−1)(
z−λ
1)(
z−λ
2), those are of genus three with two complex parameters. Our result is a two dimensional analogy of this context. The inverse of the period map for
C(λ
1,λ
2) is established in [
S] and our modular form ϑ
03(
u,
v) (for the definition, see (2.7)) is defined on a two dimensional complex ball
D={2
Rev+|
u|
2<0}, that can be realized as a Shimura variety in the Siegel upper half space of degree 3 by a modular embedding. Our main theorem says that our theta constant is expressed in terms of the Appell hypergeometric function
F1(1⁄3,1⁄3,1⁄3,1;1−λ
1,1−λ
2).
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