By constructing suitable Borcherds forms on Shimura curves and using Schofer’s formula for norms of values of Borcherds forms at CM points, we determine all of the equations of hyperelliptic Shimura curves $X_{0}^{D}(N)$. As a byproduct, we also address the problem of whether a modular form on Shimura curves $X_{0}^{D}(N)/W_{D,N}$ with a divisor supported on CM divisors can be realized as a Borcherds form, where $X_{0}^{D}(N)/W_{D,N}$ denotes the quotient of $X_{0}^{D}(N)$ by all of the Atkin–Lehner involutions. The construction of Borcherds forms is done by solving certain integer programming problems.

In his Inventiones papers in 1995 and 1998, Borcherds constructed holomorphic automorphic forms Ψ(f) with product expansions on bounded domains D associated to rational quadratic spaces V of signature (n2), starting from vector valued modular forms f of weight 1 − n2 for SL2($\open Z$) which are allowed to have poles at the cusp and whose nonpositive Fourier coefficients are integers cμ(−m), m ≥ 0. In this paper, we use the Siegel–Weil formula to give an explicit formula for the integral κ(Ψ(f)) of − log||Ψ(f)||2 over X = Γ\D, where || ||2 is the Petersson norm. This integral is given by a sum for m0 of quantities cμ(−m)κμ(m), where κμ(m) is the limit as Im(τ) → ∞ of the mth Fourier coefficient of the second term in the Laurent expansion at s = n2 of a certain Eisenstein series E(τs) of weight (n2) + 1 attached to V. The possible role played by the quantity κ(Ψ(f)) in the Arakelov theory of the divisors Zμ(m) on X is explained in the last section.