On some classes of irreducible polynomials (Q1994883)

The authors study irreducibility of multivariate polynomials with coefficients in a field \(K\). They point out a large class of polynomials \(p(x_1,\ldots,x_n)\) (\(n\ge 2\)) with the property that \(p(h_1(x_1),\ldots,h_n(x_n))\) is irreducible in the polynomial ring \(K[x_1,\ldots,x_n]\) for every non-constant univariate polynomials \(h_i\). In Theorem 10, for instance, this property is established for bivariate polynomials of the type \(p(x,y)=a(x)\sum_{i=0}^dc_i(x)y^i+b(x)\) assuming that \(K\) has characteristic zero, \(\gcd(a(x),c_d(x)b(x))=1\), and \(a(x)\) has at least two simple zeros. This result can be extended to more than 2 variables but fails in positive characteristic. In a different vein, it is shown that if \(f,g\in K[x]\setminus K\) are distinct and \(r\in K\) is non-zero then \(f(x)g(y)-f(y)g(x)+r\) is absolutely irreducible provided that char\(\, K=0\) or char\(\, K=p>0\) and \(p\) does not divide \(\deg f -\deg g\). The proofs are based on Eisenstein criterion for irreducibility.