Some observations concerning reducibility of quadrinomials (Q313412)

The authors study reducibility of polynomials of the form \(x^n+x^m+x^k+a\) with \(a\in{\mathbb{Q}}\). They characterize such quadrinomials of degree at most six having a quadratic factor, in several cases. For this, they determine all rational points on certain genus \(2\) curves. They also give some examples of such reducible polynomials with factors of degrees at least three.