In mathematics the monomial basis of a polynomial ring is its basis (as a vector space or free module over the field or ring of coefficients) that consists of all monomials. The monomials form a basis because every polynomial may be uniquely written as a finite linear combination of monomials (this is an immediate consequence of the definition of a polynomial).

One indeterminate

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The polynomial ring K[x] of univariate polynomials over a field K is a K-vector space, which has   as an (infinite) basis. More generally, if K is a ring then K[x] is a free module which has the same basis.

The polynomials of degree at most d form also a vector space (or a free module in the case of a ring of coefficients), which has   as a basis.

The canonical form of a polynomial is its expression on this basis:   or, using the shorter sigma notation:  

The monomial basis is naturally totally ordered, either by increasing degrees   or by decreasing degrees  

Several indeterminates

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In the case of several indeterminates   a monomial is a product   where the   are non-negative integers. As   an exponent equal to zero means that the corresponding indeterminate does not appear in the monomial; in particular   is a monomial.

Similar to the case of univariate polynomials, the polynomials in   form a vector space (if the coefficients belong to a field) or a free module (if the coefficients belong to a ring), which has the set of all monomials as a basis, called the monomial basis.

The homogeneous polynomials of degree   form a subspace which has the monomials of degree   as a basis. The dimension of this subspace is the number of monomials of degree  , which is   where   is a binomial coefficient.

The polynomials of degree at most   form also a subspace, which has the monomials of degree at most   as a basis. The number of these monomials is the dimension of this subspace, equal to  

In contrast to the univariate case, there is no natural total order of the monomial basis in the multivariate case. For problems which require choosing a total order, such as Gröbner basis computations, one generally chooses an admissible monomial order – that is, a total order on the set of monomials such that   and   for every monomial  

See also

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