Discriminant of a polynomial

In algebra, the discriminant of a polynomial is an invariant which determines whether or not the polynomial has repeated roots.

Given a polynomial

$f(x)=a_{n}x^{n}+a_{n-1}x^{n-1}+\cdots +a_{1}x+a_{0}$

with roots

$\alpha _{1},\ldots ,\alpha _{n}$

the discriminant Δ(f) with respect to the variable x is defined as

$\Delta =a_{n}^{2(n-1)}\prod _{i\neq j}(\alpha _{i}-\alpha _{j}).$

The discriminant is thus zero if and only if f has a repeated root.

The discriminant may be obtained as the resultant of the polynomial and its derivative.

Examples

The discriminant of a quadratic $aX^{2}+bX+c$ is $b^{2}-4ac$, which plays a key part in the solution of the quadratic equation.