Abelian functional equations, planar web geometry and polylogarithms (Q857868)

Some abelian functional equations \[ F_1 (U_1 (x, y)) + F_2 (U_2 (x, y)) + \cdots+ F_n (U_n (x, y)) = 0\tag{1} \] are investigated. Here the \(U_k(x,y)\)'s are fixed rational functions with real coefficients. The author proves that the local measurable solutions are analytic and characterizes their components as solutions of linear differential equations constructed from the \(U_k (x,y)\)'s. Two methods for solving the equation (1) are introduced and applied to the explicit resolution of generalized versions of classical inhomogeneous functional equations (1) satisfied by low order polylogarithms. Interpreted in the framework of web geometry, these results give us new nonlinearizable maximal rank planar webs. The author observes that there is a relation between these webs and certain configurations of points in \(\mathbb C\mathbb P^2\), which leads us to define the notion of web associated to a configuration: these webs seem of high rank and could provide numerous new exceptional webs. Under weak regularity assumptions, the author shows that the trilogarithm \(Li_3 (z) =\sum^\infty_{k=1}\frac{z^k}{k^3}\) (\(|z| <1\)) is the only function which satisfies the Spence-Kummer equation \[ \begin{multlined} 2L(x) + 2L(y) - L \biggl(\frac {x}{y}\biggr) + 2L \biggl(\frac {1 - y} {1 - x}\biggr) + 2L \biggl(\frac {x(1 - y)}{y(1-x)}\biggr)- L(xy)\\ + 2L\biggl(- \frac {x(1-y)}{1-x}\biggr) + 2L \biggl( - \frac {1 -y} {y (1 - x)}\biggr) - L \biggl(\frac {x(1 - y)^2} {y(1 - x)^2}\biggr)\\ = 2 \sum^\infty_{k =1}\frac {1}{k^3} - (\log\, y)^2 \log \biggl(\frac {1 - y}{1 - x}\biggr) + \frac {\pi^2}{3} \log\, y + \frac {\log\, y)^3}{3}\end{multlined} \] for \(0 < x < y < 1\). The paper is presented in a precise and elegant way.