English

Conservation Laws for the Density of Roots of Polynomials under Differentiation

Analysis of PDEs 2020-09-22 v3

Abstract

Let pn(x)p_n(x) be a polynomial of degree nn having nn distinct, real roots distributed according to a nice probability distribution u(0,x)dxu(0,x)dx on R\mathbb{R}. One natural problem is to understand the density u(t,x)u(t,x) of the roots of the (tn)(t\cdot n)-th derivative of pnp_n where 0<t<10 < t < 1 as nn \rightarrow \infty. We derive an \textit{infinite} number of conversation laws for the evolution of u(t,x)u(t,x). The first three are \begin{align*} \int_{\mathbb{R}}{ u(t,x) ~ dx} = 1-t, \qquad \qquad \int_{\mathbb{R}}{ u(t,x) x ~ dx} = \left(1-t\right)\int_{\mathbb{R}}{ u(0,x) x~ dx}, \qquad \int_{\mathbb{R}} \int_{\mathbb{R}} u(t,x) (x-y)^2 u(t,y) ~ dx dy = (1-t)^3 \int_{\mathbb{R}} \int_{\mathbb{R}} u(0,x) (x-y)^2 u(0,y) ~ dx dy. \end{align*} The author suggested that u(t,x)u(t,x) might evolve according to a nonlocal evolution equation involving the Hilbert transform; this has been verified for two special closed form solutions -- these conservation laws thus point to interesting identities for the Hilbert transform. We discuss many open problems.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2001.09967,
  title  = {Conservation Laws for the Density of Roots of Polynomials under Differentiation},
  author = {Stefan Steinerberger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2001.09967},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

This paper is withdrawn because there is an error in the last section: the algebraic identities, in the limit n-> \infty, all collapse to the first conservation law. One could wonder whether this can be fixed via a suitable renormalization scheme but at present, the argument is incomplete