The Cayley-Menger determinant is irreducible for n≥3n\geq 3

We prove that the Cayley-Menger determinant of an $n$-dimensional simplex is an absolutely irreducible polynomial for $n\geq3.$ We also study the irreducibility of polynomials associated to related geometric constructions.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure

Quantitative equidistribution for the solutions of systems of sparse polynomial equations

For a system of Laurent polynomials f_1,..., f_n \in C[x_1^{\pm1},..., x_n^{\pm1}] whose coefficients are not too big with respect to its directional resultants, we show that the solutions in the algebraic n-th dimensional complex torus of the system of equations f_1=\dots=f_n=0, are approximately equidistributed near the unit polycircle. This generalizes to the multivariate case a classical result due to Erdos and Turan on the distribution of the arguments of the roots of a univariate polynomial. We apply this result to bound the number of real roots of a system of Laurent polynomials, and to study the asymptotic distribution of the roots of systems of Laurent polynomials with integer coefficients, and of random systems of Laurent polynomials with complex coefficients.Comment: 29 pages, 2 figures. Revised version, accepted for publication in the American Journal of Mathematic

Factoring bivariate sparse (lacunary) polynomials

We present a deterministic algorithm for computing all irreducible factors of degree $\le d$ of a given bivariate polynomial $f\in K[x,y]$ over an algebraic number field $K$ and their multiplicities, whose running time is polynomial in the bit length of the sparse encoding of the input and in $d$. Moreover, we show that the factors over \Qbarra of degree $\le d$ which are not binomials can also be computed in time polynomial in the sparse length of the input and in $d$.Comment: 20 pp, Latex 2e. We learned on January 23th, 2006, that a multivariate version of Theorem 1 had independently been achieved by Erich Kaltofen and Pascal Koira

Intrinsic palindromic numbers

We introduce a notion of palindromicity of a natural number which is independent of the base. We study the existence and density of palindromic and multiple palindromic numbers, and we raise several related questions.Comment: 6 pages, Latex2