In this short note we give a new approach to proving modularity of $p$-adic Galois representations using a method of $p$-adic approximations. This recovers some of the well-known results of Wiles and Taylor in many, but not all, cases. A feature of the new approach is that it works directly with the $p$-adic Galois representation whose modularity is sought to be established. The three main ingredients are a Galois cohomology technique of Ramakrishna, a level raising result due to Ribet, Diamond, Taylor,...

Special values of certain $L$ functions of the type $L(M,s)$ are studied where $M$ is a motive over a totally real field $F$ with coefficients in another field $T$, and$$L(M,s)=\prod _{𝔭}{L}_{𝔭}(M,𝒩{𝔭}^{-s})$$is an Euler product $𝔭$ running through maximal ideals of the maximal order ${𝒪}_F$ of $F$ and$$\begin{array}{cc}\hfill L_{𝔭}(M,X{)}^{-1}& =(1-{\alpha }^{\left(1\right)}(𝔭\left)X\right)·(1-{\alpha }^{\left(2\right)}(𝔭\left)X\right)·...·(1-\alpha (d\left)\right(𝔭\left)X\right)\hfill \\ & =1+A_1\left(𝔭\right)X+...+A_d\left(𝔭\right)X^d\hfill \end{array}$$being a polynomial with coefficients in $T$. Using the Newton and the Hodge polygons of $M$ one formulate a conjectural criterium for the existence of a $p$-adic analytic continuation of the special values. This conjecture is verified in a number of cases related to...