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Counting Separable Polynomials in ℤ/n[x]

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 November 2018

Jason K. C. Polak*
Affiliation:
School of Mathematics and Statistics, _e University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia, e-mail: jpolak@jpolak.org
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Abstract

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For a commutative ring $R$ , a polynomial $f\,\in \,R[x]$ is called separable if $R[x]/f$ is a separable $R$ -algebra. We derive formulae for the number of separable polynomials when $R\,=\,\mathbb{Z}/n$ , extending a result of L. Carlitz. For instance, we show that the number of polynomials in $\mathbb{Z}/n[x]$ that are separable is $\phi (n){{n}^{d}}{{\prod }_{i}}(1\,-\,p_{i}^{-d})$ , where $n\,=\,\prod p_{i}^{{{k}_{i}}}$ is the prime factorisation of $n$ and $\phi $ is Euler’s totient function.

Information

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Mathematical Society 2018