Computing low-degree factors of lacunary polynomials: a Newton-Puiseux approach

We present a new algorithm for the computation of the irreducible factors of degree at most $d$, with multiplicity, of multivariate lacunary polynomials over fields of characteristic zero. The algorithm reduces this computation to the computation of irreducible factors of degree at most $d$ of univariate lacunary polynomials and to the factorization of low-degree multivariate polynomials. The reduction runs in time polynomial in the size of the input polynomial and in $d$. As a result, we obtain a new polynomial-time algorithm for the computation of low-degree factors, with multiplicity, of multivariate lacunary polynomials over number fields, but our method also gives partial results for other fields, such as the fields of $p$-adic numbers or for absolute or approximate factorization for instance. The core of our reduction uses the Newton polygon of the input polynomial, and its validity is based on the Newton-Puiseux expansion of roots of bivariate polynomials. In particular, we bound the valuation of $f(X,\phi)$ where $f$ is a lacunary polynomial and $\phi$ a Puiseux series whose vanishing polynomial has low degree.Comment: 22 page

A hitting set construction, with application to arithmetic circuit lower bounds

14 pagesA polynomial identity testing algorithm must determine whether a given input polynomial is identically equal to 0. We give a deterministic black-box identity testing algorithm for univariate polynomials of the form $\sum_{j=0}^t c_j X^{\alpha_j} (a + b X)^{\beta_j}$. From our algorithm we derive an exponential lower bound for representations of polynomials such as $\prod_{i=1}^{2^n} (X^i-1)$ under this form. It has been conjectured that these polynomials are hard to compute by general arithmetic circuits. Our result shows that the ``hardness from derandomization'' approach to lower bounds is feasible for a restricted class of arithmetic circuits. The proof is based on techniques from algebraic number theory, and more precisely on properties of the height function of algebraic numbers