Multiple <Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis>-zeta functions and multiple <Emphasis Type="Italic">q</Emphasis>-polylogarithms

For every positive integer d we define the q-analog of multiple zeta function of depth d and study its properties, generalizing the work of Kaneko et al. who dealt with the case d=1. We first analytically continue it to a meromorphic function on ℂ ^d with explicit poles. In our Main Theorem we show that its limit when q ↑1 is the ordinary multiple zeta function. Then we consider some special values of these functions when d=2. At the end of the paper we also propose the q-analogs of multiple polylogarithms by using Jackson’s q-iterated integrals and then study some of their properties. Our definition is motivated by those of Koornwinder and Schlesinger although theirs are slightly different from ours. Partially supported by NSF grant DMS0139813 and DMS0348258.