Problem:
Let be the set of all polynomials with real coefficients, and let denote the degree of a nonzero polynomial . Find all functions satisfying the following conditions:
- maps the zero polynomial to itself,
- for any non-zero polynomial , , and
- for any two polynomials , the polynomials and have the same set of real roots.
Solution
Solution:
We have for all , or for all . These clearly satisfy the given conditions.
Proof
Claim 1 For all .
Proof. Using condition 3 on the polynomials and , we see that has the same set of real roots as , which is . Therefore is identically zero.
Note that this implies is bijective. In what follows, will mean that and have the same set of real roots. Note that putting for in condition 2 gives for all (call this statement ). In particular, putting here, for all (call this ).
Claim 2 For all non-zero , .
Proof. The right inequality is simply condition 2. Now using condition 2 on the polynomial , we see that which gives because of claim 1.
Claim 3 For all .
Proof. Note that nonzero constant polynomials have no root, so by , their image must have no root. This is impossible if that image has degree 1; so by condition 2, the image has degree 0, i.e., is a constant polynomial. First consider the case when is even; assume for now the leading coefficient of is positive. That means for , so it has a global minimum, say . Then the polynomial () has no real roots. Using on and the constant polynomial , we see that has no roots. But this is impossible if is odd (since is a constant), so by claim 2, we must have . A similar argument holds if has negative leading coefficient.
Now if is odd, then cannot be even, otherwise would be an even degree polynomial whose image has odd degree, contradicting the last paragraph. Thus is odd, and using claim 2, we infer that .
We call a polynomial ninth-grade if all roots of are real and distinct. Clearly for any ninth-grade , and have the roots and same degree, so for some non-zero .
Claim 4 Given any non-constant , we can choose with degree bigger than so that both and are ninth-grade.
Proof. Assume that all real roots of are inside the interval . Now choose a number which has the same parity as and is bigger than , and choose numbers . Consider the polynomial , so that has the same sign as the leading coefficient of (value of will be chosen later). Clearly has alternating signs on the intervals , and has the same sign as outside . Let be the extrema of on the intervals in that order, and suppose they are attained at . Make large enough so that for all . Then has degree , and has alternating signs at for , so it has exactly distinct roots. Now it is enough to take .
Claim 5 For any for some non-zero real .
Proof. We have already proved this for ninth-grade polynomials. Take ninth-grade so that is ninth grade and . Then . Since is ninth-grade and has the same degree as , for non-zero reals . Comparing the leading term (which belongs to ) on both sides, , therefore .
Claim 6 For any .
Proof. We note that for any two polynomials if has a real root which is not a root of , then . Indeed, if is a root of (meaning ), then it's also a root of , so that .
Now for any two , choose odd such that . Then the polynomial is such that and both have real roots, so .
Claim 6 clearly means there is so that for all . Using the fact , we see that the only possibilities are or , completing the proof.