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When a cubic equation with real coefficients has three real roots, the formulas expressing these roots in terms of radicals involve complex numbers. Galois theory allows proving that when the three roots are real, and none is rational ( casus irreducibilis ), one cannot express the roots in terms of real radicals.
Cubic equations, which are polynomial equations of the third degree (meaning the highest power of the unknown is 3) can always be solved for their three solutions in terms of cube roots and square roots (although simpler expressions only in terms of square roots exist for all three solutions, if at least one of them is a rational number).
The derivative of a cubic function is a quadratic function. A cubic function with real coefficients has either one or three real roots (which may not be distinct); [1] all odd-degree polynomials with real coefficients have at least one real root. The graph of a cubic function always has a single inflection point.
Vieta's formulas are frequently used with polynomials with coefficients in any integral domain R.Then, the quotients / belong to the field of fractions of R (and possibly are in R itself if happens to be invertible in R) and the roots are taken in an algebraically closed extension.
Casus irreducibilis (from Latin 'the irreducible case') is the name given by mathematicians of the 16th century to cubic equations that cannot be solved in terms of real radicals, that is to those equations such that the computation of the solutions cannot be reduced to the computation of square and cube roots.
The solution in radicals (without trigonometric functions) of a general cubic equation, when all three of its roots are real numbers, contains the square roots of negative numbers, a situation that cannot be rectified by factoring aided by the rational root test, if the cubic is irreducible; this is the so-called casus irreducibilis ...
In mathematics, the complex conjugate root theorem states that if P is a polynomial in one variable with real coefficients, and a + bi is a root of P with a and b real numbers, then its complex conjugate a − bi is also a root of P. [1]
For simple roots, this results immediately from the implicit function theorem. This is true also for multiple roots, but some care is needed for the proof. A small change of coefficients may induce a dramatic change of the roots, including the change of a real root into a complex root with a rather large imaginary part (see Wilkinson's polynomial).