A property of the elementary symmetric functions (Q2504794)

Let \(x_i\) , \(i = 1 , \ldots , n\), be complex numbers; the authors denote by \(\sigma (n,k)\) the \(k^{th}\) order elementary symmetric function associated with the set \({x_1 , \ldots , x_n}\), \(S_n(x) = \mathop{\prod_{i=1}^n(x-x_i)} \) and \(\Phi(n,k)=(-1)^{n+k} S_n'(x_k)\) and deduce some relations among these expressions. Then they apply their results explicitly to obtain the entries of the inverse of a Vandermonde matrix and to provide a new construction for a system of matrix eigenvectors involving the eigenvalues of the matrix and the elementary symmetric functions.