Hypertranscendence and $q$-difference equations over elliptic functionfields

Abstract: The differential nature of solutions of linear difference equations over the projective line was recently elucidated. In contrast, little is known about the differential nature of solutions of linear difference equations over elliptic curves. In the present paper, we study power series $f(z)$ with complex coefficients satisfying a linear difference equation over a field of elliptic functions $K$,with respect to the difference operator $\phi f(z)=f(qz)$, $2\le q\in\mathbb{Z}$,arising from an endomorphism of the elliptic curve. Our main theoremsays that such an $f$ satisfies, in addition, a polynomial differentialequation with coefficients from $K,$ if and only if it belongs tothe ring $S=K[z,z^{-1},\zeta(z,\Lambda)]$ generated over $K$ by$z,z^{-1}$ and the Weierstrass $\zeta$-function. This is the first elliptic extension of recent theorems of Adamczewski, Dreyfus and Hardouin concerning the differential transcendence of solutions of difference equations with coefficients in $\mathbb{C}(z),$ in which various difference operators were considered (shifts, $q$-differenceoperators or Mahler operators). While the general approach, of usingparametrized Picard-Vessiot theory, is similar, many features, andin particular the emergence of monodromy considerations and the ring$S$, are unique to the elliptic case and are responsible for non-trivial difficulties. We emphasize that, among the intermediate results, we prove an integrability result for difference-differential systems over ellipticcurves which is a genus one analogue of the integrability results obtained by Sch\''afke and Singer over the projective line.