The Expected Number of Roots over The Field of p-adic Numbers

Abstract: We study the roots of a random polynomial over the field of

p

-adic numbers. For a random monic polynomial with i.i.d. coefficients in

m a t h b b Z_{p}

, we obtain an estimate for the expected number of roots of this polynomial. In particular, if the coefficients take the values

p m 1

with equal probability, the expected number of

p

-adic roots converges to

l e f t (p - 1 i g h t) / l e f t (p + 1 i g h t)

as the degree of the polynomial tends to

i n f t y

.

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