English

Coefficients and higher order derivatives of cyclotomic polynomials: old and new

Number Theory 2018-08-23 v2

Abstract

The nthn^{th} cyclotomic polynomial Φn(x)\Phi_n(x) is the minimal polynomial of an nthn^{th} primitive root of unity. Its coefficients are the subject of intensive study and some formulas are known for them. Here we are interested in formulas which are valid for all natural numbers nn. In these a host of famous number theoretical objects such as Bernoulli numbers, Stirling numbers of both kinds and Ramanujan sums make their appearance, sometimes even at the same time! In this paper we present a survey of these formulas which until now were scattered in the literature and introduce an unified approach to derive some of them, leading also to shorter proofs as a by-product. In particular, we show that some of the formulas have a more elegant reinterpretation in terms of Bell polynomials. This approach amounts to computing the logarithmic derivatives of Φn\Phi_n at certain points. Furthermore, we show that the logarithmic derivatives at ±1\pm 1 of any Kronecker polynomial (a monic product of cyclotomic polynomials and a monomial) satisfy a family of linear equations whose coefficients are Stirling numbers of the second kind. We apply these equations to show that certain polynomials are not Kronecker. In particular, we infer that for every k4k\ge 4 there exists a symmetric numerical semigroup with embedding dimension kk and Frobenius number 2k+12k+1 that is not cyclotomic, thus establishing a conjecture of Alexandru Ciolan, Pedro Garc\'ia-S\'anchez and the second author. In an appendix Pedro Garc\'ia-S\'anchez shows that for every k4k\ge 4 there exists a symmetric non-cyclotomic numerical semigroup having Frobenius number 2k+1.2k+1.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1805.05207,
  title  = {Coefficients and higher order derivatives of cyclotomic polynomials: old and new},
  author = {Andrés Herrera-Poyatos and Pieter Moree},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1805.05207},
  year   = {2018}
}

Comments

30 pages, 1 figure, 3 tables, Section 6.1 is based on remarks by Michael Filaseta and Curtis McMullen, appendix by Pedro Garc\'ia-S\'anchez giving a different proof of Theorem 1.4 b)