Differential transcendence of Bell numbers and relatives: a Galois theoretic approach.

We show that Klazar's results on the differential transcendence of the ordinary generating function of the Bell numbers over the field $\mathbb{C}(\{t\})$ of meromorphic functions at $0$ is an instance of a general phenomenon that can be proven in a compact way using difference Galois theory. We present the main principles of this theory in order to prove a general result of differential transcendence over $\mathbb{C}(\{t\})$, that we apply to many other (infinite classes of) examples of generating functions, including as very special cases the ones considered by Klazar. Most of our examples belong to Sheffer's class, well studied notably in umbral calculus. They all bring concrete evidence in support to the Pak-Yeliussizov conjecture, according to which a sequence whose both ordinary and exponential generating functions satisfy nonlinear differential equations with polynomial coefficients necessarily satisfies a linear recurrence with polynomial coefficients.