On the reducibility behaviour of Thue polynomials

Abstract

We prove a result about reducibility behaviour of Thue polynomials over the rationals that was conjectured by Müller. More precisely, we show that, apart from few explicitly given exceptions, these polynomials have only finitely many reducible integer specializations. Special cases have been proved e.g. by Müller and Langmann. The proof uses ramification theory to reduce the assertion to a statement about permutation groups containing an $n$-cycle. This statement is finally proven with the help of the classification of primitive permutation groups containing an $n$-cycle (a result which rests on the classification of finite simple groups).