A Near-Optimal Algorithm for Computing Real Roots of Sparse Polynomials

Abstract: Let $p\in\mathbb{Z}[x]$ be an arbitrary polynomial of degree $n$ with $k$ non-zero integer coefficients of absolute value less than $2^\tau$. In this paper, we answer the open question whether the real roots of $p$ can be computed with a number of arithmetic operations over the rational numbers that is polynomial in the input size of the sparse representation of $p$. More precisely, we give a deterministic, complete, and certified algorithm that determines isolating intervals for all real roots of $p$ with $O(k^3\cdot\log(n\tau)\cdot \log n)$ many exact arithmetic operations over the rational numbers. When using approximate but certified arithmetic, the bit complexity of our algorithm is bounded by $\tilde{O}(k^4\cdot n\tau)$, where $\tilde{O}(\cdot)$ means that we ignore logarithmic. Hence, for sufficiently sparse polynomials (i.e. $k=O(\log^c (n\tau))$ for a positive constant $c$), the bit complexity is $\tilde{O}(n\tau)$. We also prove that the latter bound is optimal up to logarithmic factors.