Legendre transform, Hessian conjecture and tree formula Original Research Article

Let φφ be a polynomial over KK (a field of characteristic 0) such that the Hessian of φφ is a nonzero constant. Let View the MathML sourceφ̄ be the formal Legendre transform of φφ. Then View the MathML sourceφ̄ is well defined as a formal power series over KK. The Hessian conjecture introduced here claims that View the MathML sourceφ̄ is actually a polynomial. This conjecture is shown to be true when K=RK=R and the Hessian matrix of φφ is either positive or negative definite somewhere. It is also shown to be equivalent to the famous Jacobian conjecture. Finally, a tree formula for View the MathML sourceφ̄ is derived; as a consequence, the tree inversion formula of Gurja and Abyankar is obtained.