Heine's method and $A_n$ to $A_m$ transformation formulas

Abstract

We apply Heine's method---the key idea Heine used in 1846 to derive his famous transformation formula for $_2\phi_1$ series---to multiple basic series over the root system of type $A$. In the classical case, this leads to a bibasic extension of Heine's formula, which was implicit in a paper of Andrews which he wrote in 1966. As special cases, we recover extensions of many of Ramanujan's $_2\phi_1$ transformations. In addition, we extend previous work of the author regarding a bibasic extension of Andrews' $q$-Lauricella function, and show how to obtain very general transformation formulas of this type. The results obtained include transformations of an $n$-fold sum into an $m$-fold sum.