Reflections on symmetric polynomials and arithmetic functions

Abstract

In an isomorphic copy of the ring of symmetric polynomials we study some families of polynomials which are indexed by rational weight vectors. These families include well known symmetric polynomials, such as the elementary, homogeneous, and power sum symmetric polynomials. We investigate properties of these families and focus on constructing their rational roots under a product induced by convolution. A direct application of the latter is to the description of the roots of certain multiplicative arithmetic functions (the core functions) under the convolution product.