English

Greatest common divisors of iterates of polynomials

Number Theory 2016-11-15 v1 Dynamical Systems

Abstract

Following work of Bugeaud, Corvaja, and Zannier for integers, Ailon and Rudnick prove that for any multiplicatively independent polynomials, a,bC[x]a, b \in {\mathbb C}[x], there is a polynomial hh such that for all nn, we have gcd(an1,bn1)h \gcd(a^n - 1, b^n - 1) \mid h We prove a compositional analog of this theorem, namely that if f,gC[x]f, g \in {\mathbb C}[x] are nonconstant compositionally independent polynomials and c(x)C[x]c(x) \in {\mathbb C}[x], then there are at most finitely many λ\lambda with the property that there is an nn such that (xλ)(x - \lambda) divides gcd(fn(x)c(x),gn(x)c(x))\gcd(f^{\circ n}(x) - c(x), g^{\circ n}(x) - c(x)).

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Cite

@article{arxiv.1611.04115,
  title  = {Greatest common divisors of iterates of polynomials},
  author = {Liang-Chung Hsia and Thomas J. Tucker},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1611.04115},
  year   = {2016}
}

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22 pages