Parity of the Number of Irreducible Factors for Composite Polynomials

Various results on parity of the number of irreducible factors of given polynomials over finite fields have been obtained in the recent literature. Those are mainly based on Swan’s theorem in which discriminants of polynomials over a finite field or the integral ring Z play an important role. In this paper we consider discriminants of the composition of some polynomials over finite fields. The relation between the discriminants of composed polynomial and the original ones will be established. We apply this to obtain some results concerning the parity of the number of irreducible factors for several special polynomials over finite fields.

On Solutions of Holonomic Divided-Difference Equations on Non-Uniform Lattices

The main aim of this paper is the development of suitable bases (replacing the power basis x^n (n\in\IN_\le 0) which enable the direct series representation of orthogonal polynomial systems on non-uniform lattices (quadratic lattices of a discrete or a q-discrete variable). We present two bases of this type, the first of which allows to write solutions of arbitrary divided-difference equations in terms of series representations extending results given in [16] for the q-case. Furthermore it enables the representation of the Stieltjes function which can be used to prove the equivalence between the Pearson equation for a given linear functional and the Riccati equation for the formal Stieltjes function. If the Askey-Wilson polynomials are written in terms of this basis, however, the coefficients turn out to be not q-hypergeometric. Therefore, we present a second basis, which shares several relevant properties with the first one. This basis enables to generate the defining representation of the Askey-Wilson polynomials directly from their divided-difference equation. For this purpose the divided-difference equation must be rewritten in terms of suitable divided-difference operators developed in [5], see also [6].