# Thread: Measure of the roots of a multivariate polynomial.

1. ## Measure of the roots of a multivariate polynomial.

Hey, I'm trying to show the following proposition, but I have no idea where to start with it;

Let $P(x)$ be a polynomial, where $x \in R^n$. Show that the set $\{x \in R^n ; P(x)=0\}$ has Lebesgue measure zero.

2. ## Re: Measure of the roots of a multivariate polynomial.

Let $P(x)$ be a polynomial, where $x \in R^n$. Show that the set $\{x \in R^n ; P(x)=0\}$ has Lebesgue measure zero.
This only works for nonzero polynomials, where we can use induction. Suppose the result holds for $n-1$ and let $A=\{x_n:P(x_1,\cdots,x_n)=0\forall x_1,\cdots,x_{n-1}\}$. Then $A$ has measure zero in $\mathbb{R}$. Furthermore, for each fixed $u\in\mathbb{R}\setminus A$, the polynomial $P(x_1,\cdots,x_{n-1},u)\in\mathbb{R}[x_1,\cdots,x_{n-1}]$ is nonzero, which means the set $B(u)=\{(x_1,\cdots,x_{n-1}):P(x_1,\cdots,x_{n-1},u)=0\}$ has measure zero in $\mathbb{R}^{n-1}$ by the inductive hypothesis. Show that
$\mathbb{R}^{n-1}\times A$ and
$C:=\bigcup_{u\in\mathbb{R}\setminus A}[B(u)\times\{u\}]$
both have measure zero in $\mathbb{R}^n$, and it will follow that $\mathcal{Z}(P)=C\cup(\mathbb{R}^{n-1}\times A)$ has measure zero, where $\mathcal{Z}(P)\subset\mathbb{R}^n$ is the set of zeros of $P$.