English

Polynomials, sign patterns and Descartes' rule of signs

Classical Analysis and ODEs 2019-05-10 v1

Abstract

By Descartes' rule of signs, a real degree dd polynomial PP with all nonvanishing coefficients, with cc sign changes and pp sign preservations in the sequence of its coefficients (c+p=dc+p=d) has poscpos\leq c positive and negpneg\leq p negative roots, where posc(pos\equiv c(\, mod 2)2) and negp(neg\equiv p(\, mod 2)2). For 1d31\leq d\leq 3, for every possible choice of the sequence of signs of coefficients of PP (called sign pattern) and for every pair (pos,neg)(pos, neg) satisfying these conditions there exists a polynomial PP with exactly pospos positive and exactly negneg negative roots (all of them simple). For d4d\geq 4 this is not so. It was observed that for 4d104\leq d\leq 10, in all nonrealizable cases either pos=0pos=0 or neg=0neg=0. It was conjectured that this is the case for any d4d\geq 4. We show a counterexample to this conjecture for d=11d=11. Namely, we prove that for the sign pattern (+,,,,,,+,+,+,+,+,)(+,-,-,-,-,-,+,+,+,+,+,-) and the pair (1,8)(1,8) there exists no polynomial with 11 positive, 88 negative simple roots and a complex conjugate pair.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1708.05530,
  title  = {Polynomials, sign patterns and Descartes' rule of signs},
  author = {Vladimir Petrov Kostov},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.05530},
  year   = {2019}
}