Galois groups in a family of dynatomic polynomials

Abstract

For every nonconstant polynomial f∈Q[x], let Φ4,f denote the fourth dynatomic polynomial of f. We determine here the structure of the Galois group and the degrees of the irreducible factors of Φ4,f for every quadratic polynomial f. As an application we prove new results related to a uniform boundedness conjecture of Morton and Silverman. In particular we show that if f is a quadratic polynomial, then, for more than 39% of all primes p, f does not have a point of period four in Qp.