Sylvester's Double Sums: the general case

Abstract

In 1853 Sylvester introduced a family of double sum expressions for two finite sets of indeterminates and showed that some members of the family are essentially the polynomial subresultants of the monic polynomials associated with these sets. A question naturally arises: What are the other members of the family? This paper provides a complete answer to this question. The technique that we developed to answer the question turns out to be general enough to charactise all members of the family, providing a uniform method.