We address the following question: what can one say, for a tuple (Y 1 , . . . , Y d ) of normal operators in a tracial operator algebra setting with prescribed sizes of the eigenspaces for each Y i , about the sizes of the eigenspaces for any non-commutative polynomial P (Y 1 , . . . , Y d ) in those operators? We show that for each polynomial P there are unavoidable eigenspaces, which occur in P (Y 1 , . . . , Y d ) for any (Y 1 , . . . , Y d ) with the prescribed eigenspaces for the marginals. We will describe this minimal situation both in algebraic terms -where it is given by realizations via matrices over the free skew field and via rank calculations -and in analytic terms -where it is given by freely independent random variables with prescribed atoms in their distributions. The fact that the latter situation corresponds to this minimal situation allows to draw many new conclusions about atoms in polynomials of free variables. In particular, we give a complete description of atoms in the free commutator and the free anti-commutator. Furthermore, our results do not only apply to polynomials, but much more general also to non-commutative rational functions. O.A. was supported by Conacyt grant A1-S-9764. G.C. and S.Y. were partly supported by the Project MESA (ANR-18-CE40-006) of the French National ResearchAgency (ANR). O.A. and R.S. gratefully acknowledge financial support by SFB TRR 195.in other words, for each such rational expression R in d non-commuting variables, ...,Y d ) . Note that this means that for determining the atoms in R(X 1 , . . . , X d ), for X 1 , . . . , X d being * -free, we can model the non-discrete parts in µ X i by any non-atomic distribution; choosing semicircular distributions for this seems to be a good option.Another consequence of Theorem 1.2 is that it allows us to define, for each noncommutative rational function R, a corresponding rational convolution R on discrete sub-probability measures on C, according to. The proof of our general results will proceed via modeling the situation of given marginal distributions, in the case of rational weights for the atoms, by a purely algebraic object, namely by matrices over the free field. The free field is the universal field of fractions of non-commutative polynomials. Those matrices over the free field contain thus all algebraic information common to all realizations by operator tuples (Y 1 , . . . , Y d ) with the given atoms in their marginals. An unavoidable atom at 0 in the distribution of P (Y 1 , . . . , Y d ) corresponds in this model to the non-invertibility of the matrices. By results of [MSY19], the special operator tuples (X 1 , . . . , X d ), where X 1 , . . . , X d are free, yield an analytic model for this algebraic situation. The inner rank on the algebraic side is then the same as the von Neumann operator algebraic rank on the analytic side, which in turn corresponds to the size of the atom in P (X 1 , . . . , X d ) at 0. (By shifting P by a constant, we can of course move the location of any atom to 0.) This shows the...