Computing arrangements of hypersurfaces (Q6971554)

The paper studies complements of arrangements of algebraic hypersurface, namely, manifolds defined as union of open semi-algebraic sets where some finite list of polynomials do not vanish. The basic case is when the polynomials have degree one, in which case the manifold is a union of convex open polyhedra (whose number is a well known invariant of the forms). In the case of general hypersurfaces, the topology and combinatorics of the complement is more subtle than the linear case. The method that is presented in the paper is an adaptation of a more general algorithm from [\textit{J. Cummings} et al., ``Smooth connectivity in real algebraic varieties'', Preprint, \url{arXiv:2405.18578}]. The key is the construction of a Morse function admitting a critical point on each of the open components of the complement of the input arrangement. The number of regions is also a maximum-likelihood degree, that is, the number of critical points of some log-likelihood function constructed from the input equations. This is itself bounded by some coefficient of a rational series. The paper also provides an implementation in Julia in the form of a package called \texttt{HypersurfaceRegions.jl}.