English

Cyclotomic polynomials at roots of unity

Number Theory 2020-08-27 v2

Abstract

The nthn^{th} cyclotomic polynomial Φn(x)\Phi_n(x) is the minimal polynomial of an nthn^{th} primitive root of unity. Hence Φn(x)\Phi_n(x) is trivially zero at primitive nthn^{th} roots of unity. Using finite Fourier analysis we derive a formula for Φn(x)\Phi_n(x) at the other roots of unity. This allows one to explicitly evaluate Φn(e2πi/m)\Phi_n(e^{2\pi i/m}) with m{3,4,5,6,8,10,12}m\in \{3,4,5,6,8,10,12\}. We use this evaluation with m=5m=5 to give a simple reproof of a result of Vaughan (1975) on the maximum coefficient (in absolute value) of Φn(x)\Phi_n(x). We also obtain a formula for Φn(e2πi/m)/Φn(e2πi/m)\Phi_n'(e^{2\pi i/m}) / \Phi_n(e^{2\pi i/m}) with nmn \ne m, which is effectively applied to m{3,4,6}m \in \{3,4,6\}. Furthermore, we compute the resultant of two cyclotomic polynomials in a novel very short way.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1611.06783,
  title  = {Cyclotomic polynomials at roots of unity},
  author = {Bartlomiej Bzdega and Andres Herrera-Poyatos and Pieter Moree},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.06783},
  year   = {2020}
}

Comments

17 pages, 4 tables, substantially reworked version. New and and very short computation of the resultant of two cyclotomic polynomials added, also results for m=5,8,10 and 12. Discussion of numerical semigroups, Coxeter polynomials and the incorrect Proposition 14 are left oUT

R2 v1 2026-06-22T16:59:11.652Z