Building counterexamples to generalizations for rational functions of Ritt's decomposition theorem (Q2509276)

The paper studies the decomposition of rational functions. More precisely, it takes known results for the decomposition of polynomials and considers whether they are true for rational functions. For instance, exploring new techniques for the First Ritt Theorem, which states that all complete decomposition chains of polynomials have the same number of components, the authors construct a counterexample showing that this is not true for rational functions having coefficients in the field of rational numbers. Another issue considered in the paper deals with field extensions. Whereas an indecomposable polynomial remains indecomposable in any extension of that field, the authors show that this is not the case for rational functions. In the particular case, they present bounds for the minimal field \(F\) for which every decomposition of a given function \(f\) over a field extension is equivalent to a decomposition over \(F\). The techniques are based on properties of groups related to rational functions, which allows the authors to discuss the number of components in the rational case and, in particular, the development of an algorithm for computing the fixing group of a rational function. These concepts of Galois theory for rational function fields provide some novel structural information on the topic of rational function decomposition.