Maslov dequantization and the homotopy method for solving systems of nonlinear algebraic equations (Q948577)

The structure \((\mathbb R_ m,\oplus,\otimes)\) is called the idempotent semi-field or the tropical semi-field if \(\mathbb R_ m=\mathbb R\cup\{-\infty\}\), \(\oplus\) is the tropical addition defined as \(x\oplus y=\max\{x,y\}\), and \(\otimes\) is the tropical multiplication defined as \(x\otimes y=x+y\). The Maslov dequantization establishes a correspondence between the field of real or complex numbers and the idempotent semi-field. The classical Gräffe-Lobachevski method for calculating roots of polynomials in dimension \(1\) can be interpreted as a homotopy procedure for solving certain system of tropical equations when the Maslov dequantization is applied. In order to solve a system of algebraic equations by homotopy method, it is necessary to define a collection of initial systems with either a priori known or easily computable solutions. Then, by establishing the homotopy of each system to the initial system, the solutions of the initial system are transformed to the solutions of the given input system by using continuous extensions along the homotopy path. In this paper, the author shows that for a system of \(n\) algebraic equations of complex dimension \(n\) in general position, a complete collection of initial systems for the homotopy method can be found from tropical solutions of an appropriately dequantized system. Also, by using the homotopy method, any complex solution of the system of algebraic equations can be calculated by canonically lifting some tropical solution of the dequantized system to \(\mathbb C^ n\).