Multivariate Polynomials with Arbitrary Number of Variables1

The goal of this article is to define multivariate polynomials in arbitrary number of indeterminates and then to prove that they constitute a ring (over appropriate structure of coefficients). The introductory section includes quite a number of auxiliary lemmas related to many different parts of the MML. The second section characterizes the sequence flattening operation, introduced in [9], but so far lacking theorems about its fundamental properties. We first define formal power series in arbitrary number of variables. The auxiliary concept on which the construction of formal power series is based is the notion of a bag. A bag of a set X is a natural function on X which is zero almost everywhere. The elements of X play the role of formal variables and a bag gives their exponents thus forming a power product. Series are defined for an ordered set of variables (we use ordinal numbers). A series in o variables over a structure S is a function assigning an element of the carrier of S (coefficient) to each bag of o. We define the operations of addition, complement and multiplication for formal power series and prove their properties which depend on assumed properties of the structure from which the coefficients are taken. (We would like to note that proving associativity of multiplication turned out to be technically complicated.) Polynomial is defined as a formal power series with finite number of non zero coefficients. In conclusion, the ring of polynomials is defined.