Bounds for polynomials on algebraic numbers and application to curve topology

Abstract

Let $P \in \mathbb{Z} [X, Y]$ be a given square-free polynomial of total degree $d$ with integer coefficients of bitsize less than $\tau$, and let $V_{\mathbb{R}} (P) := \{ (x,y) \in \mathbb{R}^2, P (x,y) = 0 \}$ be the real planar algebraic curve implicitly defined as the vanishing set of $P$. We give a deterministic and certified algorithm to compute the topology of $V_{\mathbb{R}} (P)$ in terms of a straight-line planar graph $\mathcal{G}$ that is isotopic to $V_{\mathbb{R}} (P)$. Our analysis yields the upper bound $\tilde O (d^5 \tau + d^6)$ on the bit complexity of our algorithm, which matches the current record bound for the problem of computing the topology of a planar algebraic curve However, compared to existing algorithms with comparable complexity, our method does not consider any change of coordinates, and the returned graph $\mathcal{G}$ yields the cylindrical algebraic decomposition information of the curve. Our result is based on two main ingredients: First, we derive amortized quantitative bounds on the the roots of polynomials with algebraic coefficients as well as adaptive methods for computing the roots of such polynomials that actually exploit this amortization. Our second ingredient is a novel approach for the computation of the local topology of the curve in a neighborhood of all critical points.