Vandermonde and Wronskian matrices over division rings (Q1110616)

Throughout this paper, K denotes a division ring, S a fixed endomorphism of K, D a fixed S-derivation, and \(K^*=K\setminus \{0\}\). The purpose of this paper is threefold. First, the authors develop the basic facts on skew polynomials in the (S, D)-setting, define the evaluation of such polynomials, and prove the all-important ``Product Theorem''. Second, the authors give a general computation of the rank of a Vandermonde matrix with respect to (S, D). The computation is first reduced to the case when the elements \(a_ 1\),..., \(a_ n\) used to build the Vandermonde matrix are pairwise ``(S, D)-conjugate''. In this case, the rank of the Vandermonde matrix is computed by the dimension of a vector space over a certain division subring of K. Last, the authors study the reduction of Vandermonde and Wronskian matrices from size n to size n-1, and compute the Dieudonné determinants of such matrices in the general (S, D)-setting. It turns out that, even in the classical setting when \(S=id\) and \(D=0\), the Dieudonné determinant of a non-singular Vandermonde matrix on \(a_ 1\),..., \(a_ n\) over a division ring K need not be given by \(\prod_{i>j}(a_ i-a_ j)\) in \(K^*/[K^*,K^*]\).