The lemniscate tree of a random polynomial (Q2027745)

A polynomial \(p\in \mathbb{C}[z]\) of degree \(n+1\) is called lemniscate generic if \(p'(z)\) has \(n\) distinct zeros \(w_1, \ldots, w_n\) such that for each \(1\leq i \leq n,\) \(p(w_i) \neq 0, \) and \(|p(w_i)|=|p(w_j)|\) if and only if \(i=j.\) To each lemniscate generic polynomial the authors associate a rooted, non-plane, binary tree \(LT(p)\) with \(n\) vertices, which correspond to critical points, and are bijectively labeled with the integers from \(1\) to \(n\). The labels increase along path oriented away from the root, which corresponds to the critical point with the largest value of \(|p|\). The tree \(LT(p)\) encodes the topology of the graph of \(|p(z)|.\) The branching structure of the graph is determined by the arrangement in the plane of the connected components \(\Gamma_w \subseteq \{z\in \mathbb{C}:\ |p(z)|=|p(w)| \}.\) The authors investigate the question of the number of branches in a typical \(LT(p)\). They answer this question for a lemniscate tree sampled uniformly from the combinatorial class of all such trees associated to a generic polynomial of fixed degree as well as for the lemniscate tree arising from a random polynomial with i.i.d. zeros. From a more general perspective, these results take a first step toward a probabilistic treatment (within a specialized setting) of Arnold's program of enumerating algebraic Morse functions.