English

Dynamical irreducibility of polynomials modulo primes

Number Theory 2020-09-25 v3

Abstract

For a class of polynomials fZ[X]f \in \mathbb{Z}[X], which in particular includes all quadratic polynomials, and also trinomials of some special form, we show that, under some natural conditions (necessary for quadratic polynomials), the set of primes pp such that all iterations of ff are irreducible modulo pp is of relative density zero. Furthermore, we give an explicit bound on the rate of the decay of the density of such primes in an interval [1,Q][1, Q] as QQ \to \infty. For this class of polynomials this gives a more precise version of a recent result of A. Ferraguti (2018), which applies to arbitrary polynomials but requires a certain assumption about their Galois group. Furthermore, under the Generalised Riemann Hypothesis we obtain a stronger bound on this density.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1905.11657,
  title  = {Dynamical irreducibility of polynomials modulo primes},
  author = {László Mérai and Alina Ostafe and Igor E. Shparlinski},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1905.11657},
  year   = {2020}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-23T09:28:24.153Z