A comparison of the Carlitz and digit derivatives bases in function field arithmetic (Q1590267)

A well-known theorem of Mahler says that the binomial polynomials \({x\choose n}\), \(n\geq 0\), form a basis of the \(p\)-adic Banach space of continuous functions from \({\mathbb Z}_p\) to \({\mathbb Q}_p\). In the arithmetic of function fields one considers the analogous objects \(O={\mathbb F}_q[[T]]\), \(K={\mathbb F}_q((T))\) with their natural (i.e., \(T\)-adic) valuation. The non-archimedean Banach space \(C(O,K)\) of continuous functions from \(O\) to \(K\) has a subspace \(LC(O,K)\) consisting of the \({\mathbb F}_q\)-linear continuous functions from \(O\) to \(K\). Orthonormal bases of these spaces are for example the Carlitz polynomials \(G_j\) resp. the Carlitz \({\mathbb F}_q\)-linear polynomials \(E_n\). Another orthonormal basis of \(LC(O,K)\) is given by the hyper-differential operators \({\mathcal D}_n\), \(n\geq 0\), where \({\mathcal D}_n(\sum a_i T^i):=\sum{i\choose n}a_i T^{i-n}\). From these one can construct the orthonormal basis \(\{ D_j\}_{j\geq 0}\) of \(C(O,K)\) consisting of the so-called digit derivatives \( D_j(x):=\prod_{n=0}^s{\mathcal D}_n^{\alpha_n}(x)\) where \(j=\alpha_0+\alpha_1 q+\cdots +\alpha_s q^s\) with \(0\leq\alpha_n<q\). The author proves that all the sets mentioned above are orthonormal bases and shows how to recover the coefficients of a function. More precisely, some of these facts were proved by other people and the author reproves them in a different way. The essentially new results are the formula for the coefficients with respect to the basis \(\{ D_j\}_{j\geq 0}\), the statement that for each of these bases and any non-negative integer \(m\), the \(q^m\)-th powers of such a basis form again a basis of the same space, and a formula for the coefficients with respect to the basis \(\{ {\mathcal D}_n^{q^m}\}_{n\geq 0}\). As corollaries, for \(f\in C(O,K)\) one can characterize in terms of the coefficients whether \(f\) takes values in \(O\) or is \({\mathbb F}_q\)-linear.