A sharper estimate on the Betti numbers of sets defined by quadratic inequalities (Q938303)

The paper considers the problem of bounding the Betti numbers, \(b_{i}(S)\), of a semi-algebraic set \(S \subset \mathbb{R}^{k}\) defined by polynomial inequalities \(P_{1}\geq 0,\dots, P_{s}\geq 0\), where \(P_{i}\in \mathbb{R}[ X_{1},\dots, X_{k}]\), \(s < k\), and deg\((P_{i})\leq 2\), for \(1\leq i \leq s\). It is proved that for \(0\leq i \leq k - 1\), \[ \begin{aligned} b_{i}(S)&\leq \frac{1}{2}+(k-s)+\frac{1}{2}\cdot \sum_{j=0}^{\min\{s+1,k-i\}}2^{j}\binom{s+1}{j}\binom{k}{j-1}\\ &\leq \frac{3}{2}\cdot\biggl(\frac{6ek}{s}\biggr)^{s}+k.\end{aligned} \] This improves the bound of \(k^{O(s)}\) proved by \textit{A.~Barvinok} [Math. Z. 225, No. 2, 231--244 (1997; Zbl 0919.14034)]. This improvement is made possible by a new approach, whereby one first bounds the Betti numbers of non-singular complete intersections of complex projective varieties defined by generic quadratic forms, and then uses this bound to obtain bounds in the real semi-algebraic case.