Power Sum Polynomials (Q7361716)

This article provides a formalisation of the symmetric multivariate polynomials known as power sum polynomials . These are of the form p n ( X 1 ,…, X k ) = X 1 n + … + X k n . A formal proof of the Girard–Newton Theorem is also given. This theorem relates the power sum polynomials to the elementary symmetric polynomials s k in the form of a recurrence relation (-1) k k s k = ∑ i∈[0, k ) (-1) i s i p k - i . As an application, this is then used to solve a generalised form of a puzzle given as an exercise in Dummit and Foote's Abstract Algebra : For k complex unknowns x 1 , …, x k , define p j := x 1 j + … + x k j . Then for each vector a ∈ ℂ k , show that there is exactly one solution to the system p 1 = a 1 , …, p k = a k up to permutation of the x i and determine the value of p i for i>k.