We consider the problem of finding a sparse multiple of a polynomial. Given f
in F[x] of degree d over a field F, and a desired sparsity t, our goal is to
determine if there exists a multiple h in F[x] of f such that h has at most t
non-zero terms, and if so, to find such an h. When F=Q and t is constant, we
give a polynomial-time algorithm in d and the size of coefficients in h. When F
is a finite field, we show that the problem is at least as hard as determining
the multiplicative order of elements in an extension field of F (a problem
thought to have complexity similar to that of factoring integers), and this
lower bound is tight when t=2.Comment: Extended abstract appears in Proc. ISAAC 2010, pp. 266-278, LNCS 650