The Waring Problem of Harmonic Polynomials

Abstract

This paper investigates the Waring problem of harmonic polynomials. By characterizing the annihilating ideal of a homogeneous harmonic polynomial, i.e., a real binary form that is in the kernel of the Laplacian, we show that its Waring rank equals its degree. Moreover, we show that any linear form can appear in a minimal Waring decomposition of a homogeneous harmonic polynomial, implying that the forbidden locus is empty. We also provide an explicit algorithm for computing the minimal Waring decompositions.