Classifying Galois groups of an orthogonal family of quartic polynomials

Abstract

We consider the quartic generalized Laguerre polynomials $L_{4}^{(\alpha)}(x)$ for $\alpha \in \mathbb Q$. It is shown that except $\mathbb Z/4\mathbb Z$, every transitive subgroup of $S_{4}$ appears as the Galois group of $L_{4}^{(\alpha)}(x)$ for infinitely many $\alpha \in \mathbb Q$. A precise characterization of $\alpha\in \mathbb Q$ is obtained for each of these occurrences. Our methods involve the standard use of resolvent cubics and the theory of p-adic Newton polygons. Using these, the Galois group computations are reduced to Diophantine problem of finding integer and rational points on certain curves.