English

Stretching Newton polygons using pure polynomials

Number Theory 2025-01-29 v2

Abstract

The pp-adic Newton polygon is a visual tool that encodes information about the roots and factorization of a polynomial relative to a prime pp. In this article, we investigate how the Newton polygon changes under polynomial composition. If ff and gg are polynomials with rational (or pp-adic) coefficients and the Newton polygon of gg is pure (has only one segment), we show under some mild conditions that the Newton polygon of fgf\circ g is the same as that of ff, but stretched horizontally by deg(g)\operatorname{deg}(g). When f=gf=g, this implies that all iterates of certain pure polynomials are irreducible, recovering a classical result of Robert Odoni on the irreducibility of iterated Eisenstein polynomials.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2405.10926,
  title  = {Stretching Newton polygons using pure polynomials},
  author = {Rylan Gajek-Leonard and Uri Tomer},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2405.10926},
  year   = {2025}
}

Comments

8 pages

R2 v1 2026-06-28T16:31:03.580Z