Toric intersection theory for affine root counting

DOI10.1016/S0022-4049(98)00023-1MaRDI QIDQ1295703zbMATH OpenOpenAlexFDO

Publication date 3 September 2000

Published in Journal of Pure and Applied Algebra (Search for Journal in Brave)

Full work available at URL https://arxiv.org/abs/math/9606215

counting solutions of polynomial equations mixed volumes

Toric varieties, Newton polyhedra, Okounkov bodies (14M25) Enumerative problems (combinatorial problems) in algebraic geometry (14N10) Mixed volumes and related topics in convex geometry (52A39) Lattice polytopes in convex geometry (including relations with commutative algebra and algebraic geometry) (52B20) Numerical computation of solutions to systems of equations (65H10)

Abstract: Given any polynomial system with fixed monomial term structure, we give explicit formulae for the generic number of roots with specified coordinate vanishing restrictions. For the case of affine space minus an arbitrary union of coordinate hyperplanes, these formulae are also the tightest possible upper bounds on the number of isolated roots. We also characterize, in terms of sparse resultants, precisely when these upper bounds are attained. Finally, we reformulate and extend some of the prior combinatorial results of the author on which subsets of coefficients must be chosen generically for our formulae to be exact. Our underlying framework provides a new toric variety setting for computational intersection theory in affine space minus an arbitrary union of coordinate hyperplanes. We thus show that, at least for root counting, it is better to work in a naturally associated toric compactification instead of always resorting to products of projective spaces.

Review text

Consider a system of \(n\) polynomial equations in \(n\) variables over an algebraically closed field \(K\), where the occurring monomials are fixed and the coefficients are ``generic. In this paper formulae for the number of roots of such a system in any \(K^*\)-stable subset of the affine space \(K^n\) are given. There are two main results, a recursion over ``shifted and lower-dimensional systems (main theorem I), and an expression for a special situation in terms of mixed volumes (affine point theorem II). The paper also contains a characterization of ``genericity of the coefficients in terms of sparse resultants (main theorem II). Moreover, for the case of affine space minus an arbitrary union of coordinate hyperplanes, the formulae yield upper bounds on the number of possible isolated roots. With some examples, the author illustrates that those bounds are sharper than the ones obtained from previously known results. There are two main new ideas, one is to construct from the Newton-polytopes of the given system a suitable projective toric compactification for \(K^n\), and the other is to consider ``shifts of the modified polytopes to take into account roots in certain coordinate subspaces.

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