A New Type of Dimension Polynomials of Inversive Difference Field Extensions

We introduce a reduction of inversive difference polynomials that is associated with a partition of the basic set of automorphisms and uses a generalization of the concept of effective order of a difference polynomial. Then we develop the corresponding method of characteristic sets and apply it to prove the existence and obtain a method of computation of multivariate dimension polynomials that describe the transcendence degrees of intermediate fields of finitely generated inversive difference field extensions obtained by adjoining transforms of the generators whose orders with respect to the components of the partition of the basic set are bounded by two sequences of natural numbers. We show that such dimension polynomials carry essentially more invariants (that is, characteristics of the extension that do not depend on its difference generators) than standard (univariate) difference dimension polynomials. We also show how the obtained results can be applied to the equivalence problem for systems of algebraic difference equations.