Taylor coefficients of Anderson generating functions and Drinfeld torsion extensions

We generalize our work on Carlitz prime power torsion extension to torsion extensions of Drinfeld modules of arbitrary rank. As in the Carlitz case, we give a description of these extensions in terms of evaluations of Anderson generating functions and their hyperderivatives at roots of unity. We also give a direct proof that the image of the Galois representation attached to the [Formula: see text]-adic Tate module lies in the [Formula: see text]-adic points of the motivic Galois group. This is a generalization of the corresponding result of Chang and Papanikolas for the [Formula: see text]-adic case.

Special functions and Gauss–Thakur sums in higher rank and dimension

Anderson generating functions have received a growing attention in function field arithmetic in the last years. Despite their introduction by Anderson in the 1980s where they were at the heart of comparison isomorphisms, further important applications, e.g., to transcendence theory have only been discovered recently. The Anderson–Thakur special function interpolates L-values via Pellarin-type identities, and its values at algebraic elements recover Gauss–Thakur sums, as shown by Anglès and Pellarin. For Drinfeld–Hayes modules, generalizations of Anderson generating functions have been introduced by Green–Papanikolas and – under the name of “special functions” – by Anglès, Ngo Dac and Tavares Ribeiro. In this article, we provide a general construction of special functions attached to any Anderson A-module. We show direct links of the space of special functions to the period lattice, and to the Betti cohomology of the A-motive. We also undertake the study of Gauss–Thakur sums for Anderson A-modules, and show that the result of Anglès–Pellarin relating values of the special functions to Gauss–Thakur sums holds in this generality.