Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 September 2019
Let $p:\mathbb{C}\rightarrow \mathbb{C}$ be a polynomial. The Gauss–Lucas theorem states that its critical points,
$p^{\prime }(z)=0$, are contained in the convex hull of its roots. We prove a stability version whose simplest form is as follows: suppose that
$p$ has
$n+m$ roots, where
$n$ are inside the unit disk,
$$\begin{eqnarray}\max _{1\leq i\leq n}|a_{i}|\leq 1~\text{and}~m~\text{are outside}~\min _{n+1\leq i\leq n+m}|a_{i}|\geq d>1+\frac{2m}{n};\end{eqnarray}$$
$p^{\prime }$ has
$n-1$ roots inside the unit disk and
$m$ roots at distance at least
$(dn-m)/(n+m)>1$ from the origin and the involved constants are sharp. We also discuss a pairing result: in the setting above, for
$n$ sufficiently large, each of the
$m$ roots has a critical point at distance
${\sim}n^{-1}$.
The author was supported by the NSF (DMS-1763179) and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.