In addition to Andreas's excellent answer, we should also mention the Tamagawa number conjecture of Bloch and Kato, which predicts the undetermined rational factor arising in Beilison's conjectural description of the $L$-value. The Bloch-Kato conjecture was later reformulated and generalized by Fontaine and Perrin-Riou to the case of motives with coefficients in an arbitrary number field. Here are some references : Bloch, Kato, [L-functions and Tamagawa numbers of motives.][1] Fontaine, Perrin-Riou, [Autour des conjectures de Bloch et Kato: cohomologie galoisienne et valeurs de fonctions L.][2] Colmez, [Fonctions L p-adiques.][3] Kings, [The Bloch-Kato conjecture on special values of L-functions. A survey of known results.][4] Flach, [The equivariant Tamagawa number conjecture : A survey.][5] Bellaïche, [An introduction to the conjecture of Bloch and Kato.][6] [1]: http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/search/publdoc.html?pg1=MR&s1=1086888 [2]: http://www.ams.org/mathscinet/search/publdoc.html?r=1&pg1=CNO&s1=1265546&loc=fromrevtext [3]: http://www.math.jussieu.fr/~colmez/851bourbaki.pdf [4]: http://archive.numdam.org/ARCHIVE/JTNB/JTNB_2003__15_1/JTNB_2003__15_1_179_0/JTNB_2003__15_1_179_0.pdf [5]: http://math.caltech.edu/papers/baltimore-final.pdf [6]: http://people.brandeis.edu/~jbellaic/BKHawaii5.pdf