The new density conjecture for symmetric pairs of roots

About 9 years old · traced to

Let f(x)f(x) be a polynomial of degree nn. For a prime pp in Spl(f)Spl(f), number the roots of f(x)f(x) modulo pp as

0≤r1≤⋯≤rn<p.0\le r_1\le\dots\le r_n<p.

For a subset S⊆{1,2,…,n}S\subseteq\{1,2,\dots,n\}, write Pr(f,S)Pr(f,S) for the limiting frequency table of the quantities ⌈∑i∈Sri/p⌉\left\lceil\sum_{i\in S}r_i/p\right\rceil over splitting primes, when this limit exists. The new density conjecture. Suppose that f(x)f(x) is not equal to g(h(x))g(h(x)) for any quadratic polynomial h(x)h(x). Then, for every jj with 1≤j≤n1\le j\le n, one has

Pr(f,{j,n+1−j})=[1/2,1/2].Pr(f,\{j,n+1-j\})=[1/2,1/2].

Here [1,1]/2[1,1]/2 denotes [1/2,1/2][1/2,1/2]. The statement is presented as a conjecture based on numerical experiments; it predicts an equal limiting frequency for the two possible values of the sum of each symmetric pair of normalized roots, subject to the stated non-composition hypothesis.

References

Primary source

Yoshiyuki Kitaoka, “Statistical distribution of roots of a polynomial modulo primes”, arXiv:1706.08636 (2017).

Progress summary

Never refreshed

Nothing recorded yet. Refresh searches the literature and the public web for attempts on this problem, and writes the first summary here.

Solutions 0

No solutions have been posted yet.