Computing the form of highest degree of the implicit equation of a rational surface (Q2221785)

Given a rational parametrization of a rational surface in \(\mathbb{K}^3\), the authors present an algorithm for computing the form of highest degree of the implicit equation of the surface. That is, if \(f(\bar{x})\) is the implicit equation of the surface with total degree equal to \(d\), then one can write \[ f(\bar{x})=f_d(\bar{x})+\ldots+f_0(\bar{x}), \] where \(f_i(\bar{x})\) denotes the homogeneous form of degree \(i\) and thus, the algorithm computes \(f_d(\bar{x})\) from the parametrization, obviously without computing \(f(\bar{x})\). The method mainly follows from Theorem 1 and Theorem 2, and its implementation involves a serie of techniques of symbolic computation presented in previous articles. The timings presented in Section 3 are quite impressive compared to other known methods for computing the whole implicit equation of the surface. It should be noted that the algorithm works if the given parametrization completely covers the curve at infinity, i.e, if there are no projective base points blowing up to a curve at infinity. Far from not addressing this difficult problem, an alternative is presented, but such an alternative can be costly, and not necessarily better than directly implicitizing the surface, and extracting the form of highest degree from the whole implicit equation.