In mathematics, a homogeneous polynomial is a polynomial whose nonzero terms all have the same degree. For example,
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A polynomial of degree 0 is always homogeneous; it is simply an element of the field or ring of the coefficients, usually called a constant or a scalar. A form of degree 1 is a linear form. A form of degree 2 is a quadratic form. In geometry, the Euclidean distance is the square root of a quadratic form.
Homogeneous polynomials are ubiquitous in mathematics and physics. They play a fundamental role in algebraic geometry, as a projective algebraic variety is defined as the set of the common zeros of a set of homogeneous polynomials.
Properties
A homogeneous polynomial defines a homogeneous function. This means that, if a multivariate polynomial P is homogeneous of degree d, then
for every
In particular, if P is homogeneous then
for every
Any nonzero polynomial may be decomposed, in a unique way, as a sum of homogeneous polynomials of different degrees, which are called the homogeneous components of the polynomial.
Given a polynomial ring
The dimension of the vector space (or free module)
Homogeneous polynomial satisfy Euler's identity for homogeneous functions. That is, if P is a homogeneous polynomial of degree d in the indeterminates
where
Homogenization
A non-homogeneous polynomial P(x1,...,xn) can be homogenized by introducing an additional variable x0 and defining the homogeneous polynomial sometimes denoted hP:
where d is the degree of P. For example, if
then
A homogenized polynomial can be dehomogenized by setting the additional variable x0 = 1. That is
Algebraic forms in general
Algebraic forms, or simply forms, generalize quadratic forms to any degree, and have in the past also been known as quantics (a term that originated with Cayley). To specify a type of form, one has to give the degree d and the number of variables n. A form is over some given field K, if it maps from Kn to K, where n is the number of variables of the form.
A form f over some field K in n variables represents 0 if there exists an element (x1, ..., xn) in Kn such that f(x1,...,xn) = 0 and at least one of the xi is not equal to zero.
A quadratic form over the field of the real numbers represents 0 if and only if it is not definite.