On Christol's conjecture

Abstract

We show that the unresolved examples of Christol's conjecture $ \, _3F_{2}\left([2/9,5/9,8/9],[2/3,1],x\right)$ and $_3F_{2}\left([1/9,4/9,7/9],[1/3,1],x\right)$, are indeed diagonals of rational functions. We also show that other $\, _3F_2$ and $\, _4F_3$ unresolved examples of Christol's conjecture are diagonals of rational functions. Finally we give two arguments that show that it is likely that the $\, _3F_2([1/9, 4/9, 5/9], \, [1/3,1], \, 27 \cdot x)$ function is a diagonal of a rational function.