On poly(ana)logs I.

Abstract

We investigate a connection between the differential of polylogarithms (as considered by Cathelineau) and a finite variant of them. This allows to answer a question raised by Kontsevich concerning the construction of functional equations for the finite analogs, using in part the $p$-adic version of polylogarithms and recent work of Besser. Kontsevich's original unpublished note is supplied (with his kind permission) in an ``Appendix'' at the end of the paper.