Decompositions of Laurent polynomials

Abstract

In the 1920's, Ritt studied the operation of functional composition g o h(x) = g(h(x)) on complex rational functions. In the case of polynomials, he described all the ways in which a polynomial can have multiple `prime factorizations' with respect to this operation. Despite significant effort by Ritt and others, little progress has been made towards solving the analogous problem for rational functions. In this paper we use results of Avanzi--Zannier and Bilu--Tichy to prove analogues of Ritt's results for decompositions of Laurent polynomials, i.e., rational functions with denominator a power of x.