Decomposition of multicorrelation sequences and joint ergodicity

We show that, under finitely many ergodicity assumptions, any multicorrelation sequence defined by invertible measure preserving $\mathbb{Z}^d$-actions with multivariable integer polynomial iterates is the sum of a nilsequence and a null sequence, extending a recent result of the second author. To this end, we develop a new seminorm bound estimate for multiple averages by improving the results in a previous work of the first, third and fourth authors. We also use this approach to obtain new criteria for joint ergodicity of multiple averages with multivariable polynomial iterates on $\mathbb{Z}^{d}$-systems.