Galois theory and walks in the quarter plane
In the recent years, the nature of the generating series of walks in the quarter plane has attracted the attention of many authors in combinatorics and probability. The main questions are: are they algebraic, holonomic (solutions of linear differential equations) or at least hyperalgebraic (solutions of algebraic differential equations)? In this talk, we will show how the nature of the generating function can be approached via the study of a discrete functional equation over a curve E, of genus zero or one. In the first case, the functional equation corresponds to a so called q-difference equation and all the related generating series are differentially transcendental. For the genus one case, the dynamic of the functional equation corresponds to the addition by a given point P of the elliptic curve E. In that situation, one can relate the nature of the generating series to the fact that the point P is of torsion or not.