A motivic pairing and the Mellin transform in function fields

Abstract

We define two pairings relating the A-motive with the dual A-motive of an abelian Anderson A-module. We show that specializations of these pairings give the exponential and logarithm functions of this Anderson A-module, and we use these specializations to give precise formulas for the coefficients of the exponential and logarithm functions. We then use these pairings to express the exponential and logarithm functions as evaluations of certain infinite products. As an application of these ideas, we prove an analogue of the Mellin transform formula for the Riemann zeta function in the case of Carlitz zeta values. We also give an example showing how our results apply to Carlitz multiple zeta values.