The structure of the double discriminant

Abstract: For a polynomial $f(x) = \sum_{i=0}^n a_i x^i$, we study the double discriminant $DD_{n,k} = \operatorname{disc}{a_k} \operatorname{disc}_x f(x)$, which appears in the proof of the van der Waerden--Bhargava theorem. We conjecture that $DD{n,k}$ is the product of a square, a cube, and possibly a linear monomial and we prove this when $k=0$. We also investigate the (typically large and smooth) outlying integer constant in the factorization of $DD_{n,k}$.