Curves testing boundedness of polynomials on subsets of the real plane (Q2437228)

Finding efficient and effective criteria on when a multivariate polynomial is bounded in a semialgebraic set \(S\subset{\mathbb R}^n,\) is a problem of interest in real algebraic geometry and optimization. In this article, an explicit family of semialgebraic curves associated to \(S\) is obtained, in the case \(S\subset{\mathbb R}^2,\) in such a way that a polynomial \(f\in{\mathbb R}[X,Y]\) is bounded on \(S\) if and only if it is bounded on a finite number of curves of this family. To produce this result, the author studies first a decomposition of \(S\subset{\mathbb R}^2\) as a union of a compact part and some ``tentacles'', which will be intuitively the pieces that go to infinity. This decomposition is somehow unique, and boundedness should be studied separately in each tentacle. The semialgebraic curves appear as Puiseux polynomials parameterizing the borders of these tentacles. At the end of the article, a description of a possible algorithm is presented.