Hasse-Witt invariants for trace forms of Jacobi polynomials

Abstract

In \cite{feit}, Feit used the Generalized Laguerre Polynomials (GLP) to prove that the groups $\widetilde{A}_{5}$ and $\widetilde{A}_{7}$ occur as Galois groups over $\Q$. Hajir, in \cite{hajir} extended these results to prove that $\widetilde{A}_{n}$ is Galois over $\Q$ whenever $n \equiv 1 \pmod{8}$. A key ingredient of both proofs is the explicit determination of the Hasse-Witt invariant of (the diagonalization of) the trace form of the root fields of the GLP, which relies on the calculation of a certain determinant, $\Delta_t$. The explicit formula for $\Delta_t$ used in \cite{feit} and \cite{hajir} was derived using properties specific to the GLP which do not generalize to other polynomials. In this paper we revisit Feit's original calculation of $\Delta_t$ and situate it in the context of Hankel determinants. We give an alternate derivation of $\Delta_t$ using standard combinatorial arguments and then apply these results to the Jacobi polynomials, a two-parameter family of orthogonal polynomials encompassing the GLP as a special case. We compute an explicit formula for the $\Delta_t$ of the Jacobi polynomials as well as the associated Hasse-Witt invariant. The techniques used in this paper are not specific to the Jacobi polynomials and are widely applicable.