Using Aichinger’s equation to characterize polynomial functions

Abstract

Aichinger’s equation is used to give simple proofs of several well-known characterizations of polynomial functions as solutions of certain functional equations. Concretely, we use that Aichinger’s equation characterizes polynomial functions to solve, for arbitrary commutative groups, Ghurye–Olkin’s functional equation, Wilson’s functional equation, the Kakutani–Nagumo–Walsh functional equation, and a general version of Fréchet’s unmixed functional equation.