Generalization of Vieta's formulae to the fractional polynomials, and generalizations of the method of Graeffe-Lobachevsky (Q554335): Difference between revisions

A function \(g : \mathcal{C} \rightarrow \mathcal{C}\) of the form \[ g(z) = b_kz^{\frac{\alpha_k}{\beta_k}}+b_{k-1}z^{\frac{\alpha_{k-1}}{\beta_{k-1}}}+ \cdots + b_1z^{\frac{\alpha_1}{\beta_1}} + b_0, \] where \(b_i \in \mathcal{C}, \alpha_i \in \mathcal{N} \cup 0, \beta_i \in \mathcal{N},\) and such that \(\alpha_i\) is relatively prime to \(\beta_i\) for \(i = 1,2,\dots,k\), is called a fractional-order polynomial. By generalizing Vieta's formulae and the method of Graeffe-Lobachevsky, the authors extend a well-known algorithm for finding roots of `classic' polynomials (i.e. fractional-order polynomials with \(\beta_i = 1\) for all \(i\)) to fractional-order polynomials. The authors first transform \(g(z)\) into a new fractional-order polynomial of the form \(z^{\frac{n}{m}}+c_{n-1}z^{\frac{n-1}{m}}+\cdots+c_1z^{\frac{1}{m}} +c_0\) by straightforward means. Let \(h(y) = y^n+c_{n-1}y^{n-1}+\cdots+c_1y+c_0\) be the ``associated polynomial'', and let \(y_1,\ldots,y_n\) be the zeros of h. Then \(z_i = y_i^m\) are the zeros (with multiplicity) of the transformed \(g(z)\). The remainder of the paper is devoted to finding zeros of \(h\) by: 1) Generalizing (to arbitrary positive integers \(m\)) the method of Graeffe-Lobachevsky, which gives recurrence relations for the coefficients \(A_i\) of the polynomial \[ g_n(x) = (x-x_1^m)\cdots(x-x_n^m) = x^n + A_{n-1}x^{n-1} + \cdots + A_0, \] given \[ f_n(x) = (x-x_1)\cdots(x-x_n) = x^n+a_{n-1}x^{n-1} + \cdots + a_0. \] 2) Generalizing Vieta's formulae to fractional-order polynomials, which allows the authors to calculate the values of the elementary symmetric functions on the roots of the fractional-order polynomial from the coefficients \(A_i\), thus giving easy equations for finding the roots themselves. Examples throughout help to clarify the steps in the process.