Optimal affine reparametrization of rational curves (Q548602)

Let \({\mathbb K}\) be a characteristic zero field, and let \({\mathcal C}\) be a rational curve in \({\mathbb F}^N\) (\(N\) arbitrary), where \({\mathbb F}\) is the algebraic closure of \({\mathbb K}\). Assume that \({\mathcal C}\) is parametrized by means of a birational parametrization \(\phi(t)\) with coefficients over an algebraic extension \({\mathbb K}[\alpha]\) over \({\mathbb K}\). In this situation, the paper proposes an algorithm to solve the optimization problem of computing the affine reparametrization \(t\to at+b\) such that \(\phi(at+b)\) has coefficients over an extension of \({\mathbb K}\) with algebraic degree as small as possible. The algorithm makes use of the notion of \textit{hypercircle}, related to the so-called parametric version of Weil's descent method.