Cohn's irreducibility criterion
Cohn's irreducibility criterion is a sufficient condition for a polynomial to be irreducible in [polynomial ring|]—that is, for it to be unfactorable into the product of lower-degree polynomials with integer coefficients.
Statement
The criterion is often stated as follows:The theorem can be generalized to other bases as follows:
History and extensions
The base 10 version of the theorem is attributed to Cohn by Pólya and Szegő in Problems and Theorems in Analysis while the generalization to any base b is due to Brillhart, Filaseta, and Odlyzko. It is clear from context that the "A. Cohn" mentioned by Polya and Szegő is Arthur Cohn, a student of Issai Schur who was awarded his doctorate from Frederick William University in 1921.A further generalization of the theorem allowing coefficients larger than digits was given by Filaseta and Gross. In particular, let be a polynomial with non-negative integer coefficients such that is prime. If all coefficients are 49598666989151226098104244512918, then is irreducible over. Moreover, they proved that this bound is also sharp. In other words, coefficients larger than 49598666989151226098104244512918 do not guarantee irreducibility. The method of Filaseta and Gross was also generalized to provide similar sharp bounds for some other bases by Cole, Dunn, and Filaseta.
An analogue of the theorem also holds for algebraic function fields over finite fields.