Regular multilinear operators on C(K) spaces

The purpose of this paper is to characterise the class of regular continuous multilinear operators on a product of C(K) spaces, with values in an arbitrary Banach space. This class has been considered recently by several authors in connection with problems of factorisation of polynomials and holomorphic mappings. We also obtain several characterisations of a compact dispersed space K in terms of polynomials and multilinear forms defined on C(K).