Birational transformations and values of the Riemann zeta-function
In his proof of Apery’s theorem on the irrationality of , Beukers [B] introduced double and triple integrals of suitable rational functions yielding good sequences of rational approximations to and . Beukers’ method was subsequently improved by Dvornicich and Viola, by Hata, and by Rhin and Viola. We give here a survey of our recent results ([RV2] and [RV3]) on the irrationality measures of and based upon a new algebraic method involving birational transformations and permutation groups...