Determinants of elliptic hypergeometric integrals (Q845456)

Plain hypergeometric functions and their \(q\)-analogs can be defined as either finite series or contour integrals, more or less on an equal footing. For the recently discovered elliptic hypergeometric functions, the situation is different. Their general instances are defined only via integral representations. Elliptic beta integrals are the simplest representatives of elliptic hypergeometric integrals. In the univariate setting, there is only one elliptic integral, presently the top-level known generalization of the Euler beta integral. In the multivariable case, such integrals are grouped in three classes. The \(n\)-dimensional type I elliptic beta integrals contain \(2n+3\) free parameters and there are two known general methods of proving the corresponding exact integration formulas. The type II integrals have a smaller number of parameters and admit a straightforward derivation from the type I integrals. Both types of these exactly computable integrals admit higher order extensions with more parameters with associated transformation laws. For the \(BC_n\) root system, these are elliptic analogs of an integral due to Dixon (type I) and of Selberg's famous integral (type II with \(5+1\) parameters), respectively. Multiple elliptic beta integrals of the third class can be represented as determinants of univariate integrals, which, in their turn, are reduced to computable theta function determinants. In this paper, one starts from an interpretation of the \(BC_2\)-symmetric type I elliptic hypergeometric integral evaluation as a formula for a Casoratian of the elliptic hypergeometric equation and then generalizes this construction to higher-dimensional integrals and higher-order hypergeometric functions. This allows one to prove the corresponding formulas for the elliptic beta integral and symmetry transformation in a new way, by proving that both sides satisfy the same difference equations and that these difference equations satisfy a needed Galois-theoretic condition ensuring the uniqueness of the simultaneous solution.