Quasi-homogeneous polynomial

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A quasi-homogeneous polynomial is a polynomial which has a degenerate Newton polygon. This means that if

f(x)=\sum _{\alpha }a_{\alpha }x^{\alpha }{\text{, where }}\alpha =(i_{1},\dots ,i_{r})\in {\mathbb  {N}}^{r}{\text{, and }}x^{\alpha }=x_{1}^{{i_{1}}}\cdots x_{r}^{{i_{r}}}

is a polynomial, then there r integers w_{1},\ldots ,w_{r}, called weights of the variables such that the sum w=w_{1}i_{1}+\cdots +w_{r}i_{r} is the same for all terms of f. This sum is called the weight or the degree of the polynomial. In other words, the convex hull of the set \{\alpha |a_{\alpha }\neq 0\} lies entirely on an affine hyperplane.

The term quasi-homogeneous comes form the fact that a polynomial f is quasi-homogeneous if and only if

f(\lambda ^{{w_{1}}}x_{1},\ldots ,\lambda ^{{w_{r}}}x_{r})=\lambda ^{w}f(x_{1},\ldots ,x_{r})

for every \lambda in the field of the coefficients. A homogeneous polynomial is quasi-homogeneous for all weights equal to 1.

Introduction

Consider the polynomial f(x,y)=5x^{3}y^{3}+xy^{9}-2y^{{12}}. This one has no chance of being a homogeneous polynomial; however if instead of considering f(\lambda x,\lambda y) we use the pair (\lambda ^{3},\lambda ) to test homogeneity, then

f(\lambda ^{3}x,\lambda y)=5(\lambda ^{3}x)^{3}(\lambda y)^{3}+(\lambda ^{3}x)(\lambda y)^{9}-2(\lambda y)^{{12}}=\lambda ^{{12}}f(x,y).\,

We say that f(x,y) is a quasi-homogeneous polynomial of type (3,1), because its three pairs (i1,i2) of exponents (3,3), (1,9) and (0,12) all satisfy the linear equation 3i_{1}+1i_{2}=12. In particular, this says that the Newton polygon of f(x,y) lies in the affine space with equation 3x+y=12 inside {\mathbb  {R}}^{2}.

The above equation is equivalent to this new one: {\tfrac  {1}{4}}x+{\tfrac  {1}{12}}y=1. Some authors[1] prefer to use this last condition and prefer to say that our polynomial is quasi-homogeneous of type ({\tfrac  {1}{4}},{\tfrac  {1}{12}}).

As noted above, a homogeneous polynomial g(x,y) of degree d is just a quasi-homogeneous polynomial of type (1,1); in this case all its pairs of exponents will satisfy the equation 1i_{1}+1i_{2}=d.

Definition

Let f(x) be a polynomial in r variables x=x_{1}\ldots x_{r} with coefficients in a commutative ring R. We express it as a finite sum

f(x)=\sum _{{\alpha \in {\mathbb  {N}}^{r}}}a_{\alpha }x^{\alpha },\alpha =(i_{1},\ldots ,i_{r}),a_{\alpha }\in {\mathbb  {R}}.

We say that f is quasi-homogeneous of type \varphi =(\varphi _{1},\ldots ,\varphi _{r}), \varphi _{i}\in {\mathbb  {N}} if there exists some a\in {\mathbb  {R}} such that

\langle \alpha ,\varphi \rangle =\sum _{k}^{r}i_{k}\varphi _{k}=a,

whenever a_{\alpha }\neq 0.

References

  1. J. Steenbrink (1977). Compositio Mathematica, tome 34, n° 2. Noordhoff International Publishing. p. 211 (Available on-line at Numdam)
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