Symmetric products, linear representations and trace identities

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We give the equations of the n-th symmetric product X^n/S_n of a flat affine scheme X=mathrm {Spec},A over a commutative ring F. As a consequence, we find a closed immersion into the coarse moduli space parameterizing n-dimensional linear representations of A. This is done by exhibiting an isomorphism between the ring of symmetric tensors over A and the ring generated by the coefficients of the characteristic polynomial of polynomials in commuting generic matrices giving representations of A. Using this we derive an isomorphism of the associated reduced schemes over an infinite field. When the characteristic is zero we show that this isomorphism is an isomorphism of schemes and we express it in term of traces.