This paper deals with criteria of algebraic independence for the derivatives of solutions of diagonal difference systems. The key idea consists in deriving from the commutativity of the differentiation and difference operators a sequence of iterated extensions of the original difference module, thereby setting the problem in the framework of difference Galois theory and finally reducing it to an exercise in linear algebra on the group of divisors of the involved elliptic curve or torus.

This is a study of the asymptotic behaviour of solutions of p-adic linear differential equations near the boundary of their convergence disks. We prove Dwork’s conjecture on the logarithmic growth of solutions in generic versus special disks.

We develop and study the epsilon factor of a ‘local system’ of p-adic coefficients over the spectrum of a complete discrete valuation field K with finite residue field of characteristic p>0. In the equal characteristic case, we define the epsilon factor of an overconvergent F-isocrystal over Spec(K), using the p-adic monodromy theorem. We conjecture a global formula, the p-adic product formula, analogous to Deligne’s formula for étale ℓ-adic sheaves proved by Laumon, which explains the importance of this local invariant. Namely, for an overconvergent F-isocrystal over an open subset of a projective smooth curve X, the constant of the functional equation of the L-series is expressed as a product of the local epsilon factors at the points of X. We prove the conjecture for rank-one overconvergent F-isocrystals and for finite unit-root overconvergent F-isocrystals. In the mixed characteristic case, we study the behavior of the epsilon factor by deformation to the field of norms.

In the complex domain, one can integrate (solve) holomorphic ordinary differential equations (ODEs) near a non-singular point. We study the existence of solutions in the case of a positive characteristic base field k which is complete with respect to a non-Archimedean absolute value. ODEs are substituted by modules over a ring of analytic functions endowed with an action of all differential operators. The monodromy groups associated to the corresponding category are computed.

In this paper we give new results concerning the maximal regularity of the strict solution of an abstract second-order differential equation, with non-homogeneous boundary conditions of Dirichlet type, and set in an unbounded interval. The right-hand term of the equation is a Hölder continuous function.