Solving Degenerate Sparse Polynomial Systems Faster

Consider a system F of n polynomial equations in n unknowns, over an algebraically closed field of arbitrary characteristic. We present a fast method to find a point in every irreducible component of the zero set Z of F. Our techniques allow us to sharpen and lower prior complexity bounds for this problem by fully taking into account the monomial term structure. As a corollary of our development we also obtain new explicit formulae for the exact number of isolated roots of F and the intersection multiplicity of the positive-dimensional part of Z. Finally, we present a combinatorial construction of non-degenerate polynomial systems, with specified monomial term structure and maximally many isolated roots, which may be of independent interest.Comment: This is the final journal version of math.AG/9702222 (``Toric Generalized Characteristic Polynomials''). This final version is a major revision with several new theorems, examples, and references. The prior results are also significantly improve

Certifying isolated singular points and their multiplicity structure

This paper presents two new constructions related to singular solutions of polynomial systems. The first is a new deflation method for an isolated singular root. This construc-tion uses a single linear differential form defined from the Jacobian matrix of the input, and defines the deflated system by applying this differential form to the original system. The advantages of this new deflation is that it does not introduce new variables and the increase in the number of equations is linear instead of the quadratic increase of previous methods. The second construction gives the coefficients of the so-called inverse system or dual basis, which defines the multiplicity structure at the singular root. We present a system of equations in the original variables plus a relatively small number of new vari-ables. We show that the roots of this new system include the original singular root but now with multiplicity one, and the new variables uniquely determine the multiplicity structure. Both constructions are "exact", meaning that they permit one to treat all conjugate roots simultaneously and can be used in certification procedures for singular roots and their multiplicity structure with respect to an exact rational polynomial system