The importance of the Selberg integral

It has been remarked that a fair measure of the impact of Atle Selberg's work is the number of mathematical terms which bear his name. One of these is the Selberg integral, an n-dimensional generalization of the Euler beta integral. We trace its sudden rise to prominence, initiated by a question to Selberg from Enrico Bombieri, more than thirty years after publication. In quick succession the Selberg integral was used to prove an outstanding conjecture in random matrix theory, and cases of the Macdonald conjectures. It further initiated the study of q-analogues, which in turn enriched the Macdonald conjectures. We review these developments and proceed to exhibit the sustained prominence of the Selberg integral, evidenced by its central role in random matrix theory, Calogero-Sutherland quantum many body systems, Knizhnik-Zamolodchikov equations, and multivariable orthogonal polynomial theory.Comment: 43 page

Hyperbolic beta integrals

Hyperbolic beta integrals are analogues of Euler's beta integral in which the role of Euler's gamma function is taken over by Ruijsenaars' hyperbolic gamma function. They may be viewed as $(q,\widetilde{q})$-bibasic analogues of the beta integral in which the two bases $q$ and $\widetilde{q}$ are interrelated by modular inversion, and they entail $q$-analogues of the beta integral for $|q|=1$. The integrals under consideration are the hyperbolic analogues of the Ramanujan integral, the Askey-Wilson integral and the Nassrallah-Rahman integral. We show that the hyperbolic Nassrallah-Rahman integral is a formal limit case of Spiridonov's elliptic Nassrallah-Rahman integral.Comment: 35 pages. Remarks and references to recent new developments are added. To appear in Adv. Mat

An expansion formula for the Askey-Wilson function

The Askey-Wilson function transform is a q-analogue of the Jacobi function transform with kernel given by an explicit non-polynomial eigenfunction of the Askey-Wilson second order q-difference operator. The kernel is called the Askey-Wilson function. In this paper an explicit expansion formula for the Askey-Wilson function in terms of Askey-Wilson polynomials is proven. With this expansion formula at hand, the image under the Askey-Wilson function transform of an Askey-Wilson polynomial multiplied by an analogue of the Gaussian is computed explicitly. As a special case of these formulas a q-analogue (in one variable) of the Macdonald-Mehta integral is obtained, for which also two alternative, direct proofs are presented.Comment: 24 pages. Some remarks added in section 6 on the connection with moment problem