Diagonals of rational functions, pullbacked 2F1 hypergeometric functions and modular forms (unabrigded version)

We recall that diagonals of rational functions naturally occur in lattice statistical mechanics and enumerative combinatorics. We find that a seven-parameter rational function of three variables with a numerator equal to one (reciprocal of a polynomial of degree two at most) can be expressed as a pullbacked 2F1 hypergeometric function. This result can be seen as the simplest non-trivial family of diagonals of rational functions. We focus on some subcases such that the diagonals of the corresponding rational functions can be written as a pullbacked 2F1 hypergeometric function with two possible rational functions pullbacks algebraically related by modular equations, thus showing explicitely that the diagonal is a modular form. We then generalise this result to eight, nine and ten parameters families adding some selected cubic terms at the denominator of the rational function defining the diagonal. We finally show that each of these previous rational functions yields an infinite number of rational functions whose diagonals are also pullbacked 2F1 hypergeometric functions and modular forms.Comment: 39 page

Formal power series

In this article we will describe the \Maple\ implementation of an algorithm presented in~\cite{Koe92}--\cite{Koeortho} which computes an {\em exact\/} formal power series (FPS) of a given function. This procedure will enable the user to reproduce most of the results of the extensive bibliography on series~\cite{Han}. We will give an overview of the algorithm and then present some parts of it in more detail

BC_n-symmetric polynomials

We consider two important families of BC_n-symmetric polynomials, namely Okounkov's interpolation polynomials and Koornwinder's orthogonal polynomials. We give a family of difference equations satisfied by the former, as well as generalizations of the branching rule and Pieri identity, leading to a number of multivariate q-analogues of classical hypergeometric transformations. For the latter, we give new proofs of Macdonald's conjectures, as well as new identities, including an inverse binomial formula and several branching rule and connection coefficient identities. We also derive families of ordinary symmetric functions that reduce to the interpolation and Koornwinder polynomials upon appropriate specialization. As an application, we consider a number of new integral conjectures associated to classical symmetric spaces.Comment: 65 pages, LaTeX. v2-3: Minor corrections and additions (including teasers for the sequel). v4: C^+ notation changed to harmonize with the sequels (and more teasers added