Let be a prime number, and let denote the (fi\fnite) set of residue classes modulo .
Let denote the set of -variable polynomials with coefficients in , total degree , and satisfying . Show that .
*The total degree of a -variable polynomial is the largest value of among monomials
* appearing in .
Solution
1. Define Exquisite Polynomials:
A polynomial is called exquisite if it satisfies .
2. Homogeneous Polynomials:
Let be the number of linearly independent homogeneous exquisite polynomials of degree up to a constant. We need to show that:
This implies that a generic exquisite polynomial can be expressed as a linear combination of these homogeneous parts.
3. Crucial Claim:
If we let , , and , then is exquisite if and only if it can be written as , where the degree of is .
4. Implication:
- are all exquisite, so is exquisite as well.
- For the other direction, we construct from by induction on .
5. Observation:
If , then . This follows from .
6. Induction Base Cases:
The base cases can be verified by hand.
7. Induction Step:
Assume . Let with and . If is exquisite and the coefficient of is , then:
is exquisite and divisible by , so it is a multiple of . Thus, we have:
where is exquisite and has degree . By the inductive hypothesis, there is a , which implies that can be written in that form as well. This procedure ensures that the degree of in the resulting polynomial is .
8. Counting:
Observe that are all linearly independent. Therefore, are also linearly independent. Since the crucial claim tells us that their linear combinations span the space of degree exquisite polynomials, we get:
and . From this, the conclusion follows.
9. Remark:
The characterization of exquisite polynomials remains the same if is replaced by any field with characteristic . For fields with characteristic , the exquisite polynomials are generated by and . In the case of , the answer would be:
The final answer is