The AFactors function is a placeholder for representing an absolute factorization of the polynomial p, that is a factorization over an algebraic closure of its coefficient field. It is used in conjunction with evala.

The construct AFactors(p) produces a data structure of the form  such that , where each  is a monic (for the ordering chosen by Maple) irreducible polynomial.

The call evala(AFactors(p)) computes the factorization of the polynomial p over the field of complex numbers. The polynomial p must have algebraic number coefficients.

In the case of a univariate polynomial, the absolute factorization is just the decomposition into linear factors.