Bézout number calculations for multi-homogeneous polynomial systems (Q1200228)

The concept of a multi-homogeneous system of polynomials was introduced by \textit{A. Morgan} and \textit{A. Sommese} [Appl. Math. Comput. 24, 101-113 (1987; Zbl 0635.65057)]. The Bézout number of such a multi-homogeneous system is the largest number of nonsingular solutions the system can have. It is also the number of solution paths needed to compute all geometrically isolated solutions by means of multi-homogeneous continuation. This paper describes an efficient algorithm for evaluating Bézout numbers for \(m\)-homogeneous polynomial systems in \(n\) variables. In comparison with a basic algorithm the number of operations for the worst case, \(m=n\), is reduced from \((n-1)n!\) to \(n2^{n-1}\). The algorithm is used to find homogenizations with a minimal Bézout number by exhaustive testing. For this certain efficiencies are introduced and it is also noted that the exhaustive search can be easily parallelized.