[Math] Computing a polynomial product over roots of unity

nt.number-theory

I'm trying to compute the coefficients of the following polynomial, where $\omega$ is a primitive $p$-th root of unity, for $p$ prime:

$$a(x) = \prod_{i=0}^{p-1} f(\omega^ix).$$

It turns out that the $i$-th coefficient is always an integer, and non-zero only when $i$ is a multiple of $p$. So it seems to me like there should be an elementary expression for $a$.

So far I've got this expression for the $i$-th coefficient:
$$a_i = x^i\sum_{k_0 + \ldots + k_{p-1} = i}f_{k_0} \cdots f_{k_{p-1}} \omega^{k_1 + 2k_2 + \ldots + (p-1)k_{p-1}}$$

where each $k_i$ is non-negative and bounded by the degree of $f$.

Clearly the roots of unity all cancel out somehow, but I can't figure out how to get a 'nice' expression out. Any suggestions?

Best Answer

Notice that $$ y^p-x^p=\prod_{i=0}^{p-1} (y-\omega^i x)\ . $$ Therefore $$ \prod_{i=0}^{p-1} f(x\omega^i)= Res_y (y^p-x^p, f(y))\ . $$ Where $Res_y$ is the resultant of the polynomials in $y$. The above is just a particular case of the so called Poisson product formula. You can then compute the resultant using for instance Sylvester's determinant formula. See the review http://mate.dm.uba.ar/~alidick/papers/chapter1cd.pdf by Cattani and Dickenstein for a nice introduction to resultants and their properties.

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