On the third kind periods for abelian $t$-modules

Abstract

Inspired by the relations between periods of elliptic integrals of the third kind and the periods of the extensions of the corresponding elliptic curves by the multiplicative group, we introduce the notion of the third kind periods for abelian $t$-modules and establish an evaluation for these periods that is parallel to the classical setting. When we specialize our result to the case of Drinfeld modules, an explicit formula for these third kind periods is established. We also prove the algebraic independence of periods of the first, the second, and the third kind for Drinfeld modules of arbitrary rank. This generalizes prior results of Chang for rank $2$ Drinfeld modules.