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Gruber P. Convex and Discrete Geometry

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19 Lattice Polytopes 333<br />

Irreducibility of polynomials has a long history <strong>and</strong> there is a large body of pertinent<br />

results. See, e.g. Schmidt [895], Lidl <strong>and</strong> Niederreiter [656], Mignotte <strong>and</strong><br />

Stefanescu [723] <strong>and</strong> Schinzel [887]. It plays a crucial role in finite geometry, see<br />

Hirschfeld [506], combinatorics, see Szönyi [983], <strong>and</strong> coding, compare Stichtenoth<br />

[969]. Surprisingly, Newton polytopes provide an effective tool to describe large<br />

classes of (absolute) irreducible polynomials, see Gao [355] <strong>and</strong> the references there.<br />

A remarkable result of Bernstein [100] says that the number of roots of a generic<br />

system of polynomial equations over C of the form<br />

p1(z1,...,zd) = 0<br />

p2(z1,...,zd) = 0<br />

.................<br />

pd(z1,...,zd) = 0<br />

equals d ! V (N p1 ,...,N pd ). The case d = 2 was anticipated by Minding [731]<br />

in 1841 using different terminology, as pointed out by Khovanskiĭ [583]. The<br />

case where the Newton polytopes of p1,...,pd all coincide was treated slightly<br />

before Bernstein by Kouchnirenko [612]. This result gave rise to several alternative<br />

proofs, generalizations <strong>and</strong> expositions, see Huber <strong>and</strong> Sturmfels [525, 526],<br />

Sturmfels [974], Rojas [853, 854] <strong>and</strong> the nice book by Sturmfels [975]. In the latter<br />

there are described applications to economics (Nash equilibria of n-person games),<br />

statistics (r<strong>and</strong>om walks on Zd , numerical algorithms for maximum likelihood equations),<br />

linear partial differential equations <strong>and</strong> other areas.<br />

This section contains a simple result of Ostrowski [781] which yields an<br />

irreducibility criterion, see Gao [355]. Special cases include the Stepanov–Schmidt<br />

[895] criterion for irreducibility. Then the result of Minding–Bernstein is given<br />

without proof.<br />

For more detailed information, see the articles, surveys <strong>and</strong> books cited earlier.<br />

An Irreducibility Criterion<br />

The first result is a simple observation of Ostrowski [781] on Newton polytopes, see<br />

also Gao [355].<br />

Proposition 19.4. Let p, q : E d → R be real polynomials. Then<br />

N pq = N p + Nq.<br />

Proof. Since each monomial of the polynomial pq is a sum of products of a monomial<br />

of p <strong>and</strong> a monomial of q, wehave<br />

N pq ⊆ N p + Nq.<br />

To see the reverse inclusion, it is sufficient to show that each vertex u of the convex<br />

lattice polytope N p + Nq is contained in N pq. By Lemma 6.1, u is the sum of a<br />

support set of N p <strong>and</strong> a support set of Nq. Since u is a singleton, these support sets

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