Resultant of an equivariant polynomial system with respect to the symmetric group (Q5963398)

Resultants with respect to one variable and their important role in elimination theory are undoubtedly well known. However, as far as their generalization for homogeneous polynomials in several variables is concerned, ``many fundamental questions about them still remain open'' (see Chapter 13 of \textit{I. M. Gelfand} et al. [Discriminants, resultants, and multidimensional determinants. Reprint of the 1994 edition. Boston, MA: Birkhäuser (2008; Zbl 1138.14001)]). This article is focused on systems of n homogeneous polynomials in \(n\) variables that are globally invariant under the action of the symmetric group \(S_n\). The authors follow the formalism of the resultant as developed in [\textit{J. P. Jouanolou}, Adv. Math. 90, No. 2, 117--263 (1991; Zbl 0747.13007); \textit{S. Lang}, Algebra. 3rd revised ed. New York, NY: Springer (2002; Zbl 0984.00001), Chapter IX ]and [\textit{D. A. Cox} et al., Using algebraic geometry. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Springer (2005; Zbl 1079.13017)] Chapter 3. The reader may also consult Chapter 5 of [\textit{M. Elkadi} and \textit{B. Mourrain}, Introduction à la résolution des systèmes polynomiaux. Berlin: Springer (2007; Zbl 1127.13001)]. Two important results are presented. On the one hand, Theorem 1 in Section 2 introduces a decomposition formula of the resultant of a \(S_n\) equivariant homogeneous polynomial system, in terms of other resultants easier to compute. This decomposition has the crucial property that it remains valid under any specialization of the coefficients ring of the input polynomial system. This property is quite important for applications in computational algebra and algebraic geometry. On the other hand, the other main result extends Theorem 1 to the case of the discriminant of a homogeneous symmetric polynomial. The work on this result was motivated by the unpublished note by \textit{N. Perminov} and \textit{S. Shakirov} [ ``Discriminants of symmetric polynomials'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:0910.5757}].