A symmetric polynomial on variables , ..., (also called a totally symmetric polynomial) is a function that is unchanged by any permutation of its variables. In other words, the symmetric polynomials satisfy
(1)
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where and being an arbitrary permutation of the indices 1, 2, ..., .
For fixed , the set of all symmetric polynomials in variables forms an algebra of dimension . The coefficients of a univariate polynomial of degree are algebraically independent symmetric polynomials in the roots of , and thus form a basis for the set of all such symmetric polynomials.
There are four common homogeneous bases for the symmetric polynomials, each of which is indexed by a partition (Dumitriu et al. 2004). Letting be the length of , the elementary functions , complete homogeneous functions , and power-sum functions are defined for by
(2)
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(3)
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(4)
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and for by
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where is one of , or . In addition, the monomial functions are defined as
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where is the set of permutations giving distinct terms in the sum and is considered to be infinite.
As several different abbreviations and conventions are in common use, care must be taken when determining which symmetric polynomial is in use.
The elementary symmetric polynomials (sometimes denoted or ) on variables are defined by
(7)
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(8)
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(9)
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(10)
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(11)
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(12)
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The th elementary symmetric polynomial is implemented in the Wolfram Language as SymmetricPolynomial[k, x1, ..., xn]. SymmetricReduction[f, x1, ..., xn] gives a pair of polynomials in , ..., where is the symmetric part and is the remainder.
Alternatively, can be defined as the coefficient of in the generating function
(13)
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For example, on four variables , ..., , the elementary symmetric polynomials are
(14)
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(15)
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(16)
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(17)
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The power sum is defined by
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The relationship between and , ..., is given by the so-called Newton-Girard formulas. The related function with arguments given by the elementary symmetric polynomials (not ) is defined by
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(20)
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It turns out that is given by the coefficients of the generating function
(21)
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so the first few values are
(22)
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(24)
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In general, can be computed from the determinant
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(Littlewood 1958, Cadogan 1971). In particular,
(27)
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(29)
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(30)
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(Schroeppel 1972), as can be verified by plugging in and multiplying through.