On the Galois groups of Legendre polynomials (Q2451130)

A new conjecture regarding the Galois groups of the Legendre polynomials \(P_{m}(x), m\geq 0\) is enunciated. Defining \[ L_{m}(x) = \begin{cases} P_m(x) & \text{if }m \text{ is even},\\ P_m(x)/x & \text{if }m \text{ is odd,} \end{cases} \] a conjecture by Stieltjes postulates that \(L_m(x)\) is irreducible over \({\mathbb Q}\) for all \(m\). The authors' main conjecture is that the Galois groups of \(L_m(x)\) are as large as possible. Since \(L_m(x)\) is a polynomial in \(x^2\), it is natural to consider \(c L_m(x)=J_n(-x^2)\) with \(c\) some integer and \(n\) depending on \(m\). It is shown that irreducibility of \(L_m(x)\) and \(J_n(x)\) are equivalent. Assuming Stieltjes' conjecture, the following results are shown: {\parindent=6mm \begin{itemize}\item[(1)] The Galois group of \(J_n(x)\) is not contained in the alternating group of order \(n\). \item[(2)] A special case of the Hardy-Littlewood conjecture implies that the Galois group of \(J_n(x)\) is the symmetric group of order \(n\). \item[(3)] The Hardy-Littlewood conjecture implies the conjecture above on maximality of Galois groups for large enough \(n\). \item[(4)] Certain cases of the conjecture above are proved numerically. \end{itemize}} A first tool is representing a polynomial as specialization of a Jacobi polynomial. Result 1 is proved by determining that the discriminant of the polynomial is not a square. Newton polygons of polynomials are used to provide ramification data, which in turn allow the establishment of criteria for large Galois groups. This also involves using Jordan's criterion. The authors also use the factorization of \(P_m(x)\mod p\) known as the Schur congruence and note that this should more properly be called the Holt-Schur congruence. They apply this to wildly ramified primes and use Jordan's criterion to obtain large Galois groups.