Dynamical irreducibility of polynomials modulo primes

Abstract

For a class of polynomials $f \in \mathbb{Z}[X]$, which in particular includes all quadratic polynomials, and also trinomials of some special form, we show that, under some natural conditions (necessary for quadratic polynomials), the set of primes $p$ such that all iterations of $f$ are irreducible modulo $p$ is of relative density zero. Furthermore, we give an explicit bound on the rate of the decay of the density of such primes in an interval $[1, Q]$ as $Q \to \infty$. For this class of polynomials this gives a more precise version of a recent result of A. Ferraguti (2018), which applies to arbitrary polynomials but requires a certain assumption about their Galois group. Furthermore, under the Generalised Riemann Hypothesis we obtain a stronger bound on this density.