En álgebra, el discriminante de un polinomio es una cierta expresión de los coeficientes de dicho polinomio que es igual a cero si y solo si el polinomio tiene raíces múltiples en el plano complejo. Por ejemplo, el discriminante del polinomio cuadrático es . El discriminante del polinomio cúbico es . Este concepto también se aplica si el polinomio tiene coeficientes en un cuerpo que no está contenido en los números complejos. En este caso, el discriminante se anula si y solo si el polinomio tiene raíces múltiples en su cuerpo de descomposición. El concepto de discriminante ha sido generalizado a otras estructuras algebraicas además de los polinomios, incluyendo secciones cónicas, formas cuadráticas y cuerpos de números algebraicos. Los discriminantes en la teoría de números algebraicos están fuertemente relacionados y contienen información sobre ramificaciones. De hecho, los tipos de ramificación están relacionados con tipos más abstractos de discriminantes, lo que convierte esta idea algebraica en capital en muchas aplicaciones.

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In algebra, the discriminant of a polynomial is a function of its coefficients, typically denoted by a capital 'D' or the capital Greek letter Delta (Δ). It gives information about the nature of its roots. The discriminant is zero if and only if the polynomial has a multiple root. For example, the discriminant of the quadratic polynomial is Here for real a, b and c, if Δ > 0, the polynomial has two real roots, if Δ = 0, the polynomial has one real double root, and if Δ < 0, the two roots of the polynomial are complex conjugates. The discriminant of the cubic polynomial is In particular, the discriminant of is For higher degrees, the discriminant is always a polynomial function of the coefficients. It becomes significantly longer for the higher degrees. The discriminant of a general quartic has 16 terms, that of a quintic has 59 terms, and that of a sextic has 246 terms.This is OEIS sequence A007878. If the lead coefficient a equals 1, the discriminant equals the product of the squared differences of all pairs of roots of the polynomial. Thus a polynomial has a multiple root (i.e. a root with multiplicity greater than one) in the complex numbers if and only if its discriminant is zero. The concept also applies if the polynomial has coefficients in a field which is not contained in the complex numbers. In this case, the discriminant vanishes if and only if the polynomial has a multiple root in any algebraically closed field containing the coefficients. As the discriminant is a polynomial function of the coefficients, it is defined as long as the coefficients belong to an integral domain R and, in this case, the discriminant is in R. In particular, the discriminant of a polynomial with integer coefficients is always an integer. This property is widely used in number theory. The term "discriminant" was coined in 1851 by the British mathematician James Joseph Sylvester.

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