For a course on Galois theory, we proved the fundamental theorem of symmetric polynomials, which states that every symmetric polynomial can be uniquely written as a polynomial in the elementairy symmetric polynomials. As an exercise we were asked to prove that every symmetric rational function also is a rational function in the elementary symmetric polynomials.
For this I have the following (partial) proof. Let K be a field, let be a symmetric function. We can write with g,h co'. Let , then , so . Since g and h are co', it follows that , and since the total degrees of the polynomials are the same it follows there exists some such that . Similarly for h.
Of course I would like to conclude from this that we must have since doesn't change the coefficients, but I realised the argument is more subtle than that, since this is not necessarily true. For example, with and n=3 we have
.So, does anyone know how to proceed? Ofcourse, once you have and for all the result follows from the fundamental theorem of symmetric polynomials.
As a sidenote: I know there's a proof using the fundamental theorem of Galois theory, but I would like to finish a proof using this approach.