Computing differential equations for integrals associated to smooth Fano polytope (Q351459)

Computing the annihilator of a multiple integral in the spirit of the holonomic systems approach can be a very costly task. Several algorithms for this purpose have been designed, e.g., based on Gröbner basis computations or on creative telescoping. Given a holonomic function in several variables and several parameters, the task is to compute a set of linear differential equations -- a holonomic system -- with respect to the parameters, that the integral of the given function satisfies. The authors consider the case where the integrand is a multivariate rational function and follow a D-module-theoretic approach, i.e., all annihilators are left ideals in the Weyl algebra, the algebra of linear differential operators with polynomial coefficients. They propose an algorithm that approximates the desired annihilator ideal; the approximation is improved step by step. However, for general input no stopping criterion is known, so in each step one cannot be sure whether the algorithm has already found the correct answer or whether the current result is still just an approximation. The idea of the algorithm is to start, instead of the full annihilator of the integrand, with an approximate annihilator. This means that derivatives are only considered up to a certain order. Such an approximation can be found by ``guessing'', i.e., by an ansatz with undetermined coefficients. Then the usual integration procedure is carried out on the approximate annihilator. As a proof of concept, the approximation algorithm is applied to a class of integrals that are associated to smooth Fano polytopes. The interesting property of this class is that one can derive an explicit stopping criterion from Stientra's rank formula. The presented timings demonstrate impressively the advantages of the proposed algorithm. Nevertheless one should keep in mind that the applicability of the new algorithm is limited due to the missing stopping condition.