Dynamical irreducibility of polynomials modulo primes

Applications of sieve methods (11N36) PV-numbers and generalizations; other special algebraic numbers; Mahler measure (11R06) Arithmetic and non-Archimedean dynamical systems involving polynomial and rational maps (37P05)

Abstract: For a class of polynomials

f i n m a t h b b 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

p

such that all iterations of

f

are irreducible modulo

p

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]

as

Q o i n f t y

. 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.

Review text

For a given a field \(K\) and a polynomial \(f \in K[X]\) consider the sequence of polynomials defined by \(f^{(0)}(X)=X\) and \(f^{(n)}(X)=f(f^{(n-1)}(X))\) for \(n=1,2,3,\dots\). A polynomial \(f \in K[X]\) is called \textit{stable} (or \textit{dynamically irreducible}) if its iterates \(f^{(n)}(X)\), \(n=1,2,3,\dots\), are irreducible over \(K\). For \(f \in {\mathbb Q}[X]\) and a prime number \(p\) let \(\overline{f}_p \in {\mathbb F}_p[X]\) be the reduction of \(f\) modulo \(p\). For a given dynamically irreducible polynomial \(f \in {\mathbb Q}[X]\) of degree \(d \geq 2\) it is not known whether the set of primes \(p\) for which \(\overline{f}_p\) is dynamically irreducible over \({\mathbb F}_p\) is a finite set. Let \(P_f(Q)\) be the set of primes in \([Q,2Q]\) for which \(\overline{f}_p\) is dynamically irreducible over \({\mathbb F}_p\). The authors show that if \(f \in {\mathbb Q}[X]\) is such that its derivative is of the form \(g(X)^2(aX + b)\), with \(g(X) \in {\mathbb Z}[X]\), \(a, b \in {\mathbb Z}\), \(a \ne 0\), and \(-b/a\) is not a pre-periodic point of \(f\), then one has \[P_f(Q) \leq \frac{(\log \log \log \log Q)^{2+o(1)}}{\log \log \log Q} \cdot \frac{Q}{\log Q} \] as \(Q \to \infty\). (In particular, all quadratic polynomials have their derivatives of the form as required.) They also show that under the assumption of GRH the bound is stronger \[P_f(Q) = O\Big(\frac{Q}{\log Q \log \log Q}\Big).\] The tools involve some effective results from Diophantine geometry, the square-sieve of Heath-Brown and character sums.

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