On the number of monic integer polynomials with given signature

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

In this paper, we show that the number of monic integer polynomials of degree \(d \ge 1\) and height at most H which have no real roots is between \(c_1H^{d-1/2}\) and \(c_2 H^{d-1/2}\), where the constants \(c_2>c_1>0\) depend only on d. (Of course, this situation may only occur for d even.) Furthermore, for each integer s satisfying \(0 \le s < d/2\) we show that the number of monic integer polynomials of degree d and height at most H which have precisely 2s non-real roots is asymptotic to \(\lambda (d,s)H^{d}\) as \(H \rightarrow \infty \). The constants \(\lambda (d,s)\) are all positive and come from a recent paper of Bertok, Hajdu, and Pethő. They considered a similar question for general (not necessarily monic) integer polynomials and posed this as an open question.