Chordal Graphs in Triangular Decomposition in Top-Down Style

Abstract: In this paper, we first prove that when the associated graph of a polynomial set is chordal, a particular triangular set computed by a general algorithm in top-down style for computing the triangular decomposition of this polynomial set has an associated graph as a subgraph of this chordal graph. Then for Wang's method and a subresultant-based algorithm for triangular decomposition in top-down style and for a subresultant-based algorithm for regular decomposition in top-down style, we prove that all the polynomial sets appearing in the process of triangular decomposition with any of these algorithms have associated graphs as subgraphs of this chordal graph. These theoretical results can be viewed as non-trivial polynomial generalization of existing ones for sparse Gaussian elimination, inspired by which we further propose an algorithm for sparse triangular decomposition in top-down style by making use of the chordal structure of the polynomial set. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for triangular decomposition, when the polynomial set is chordal and sparse with respect to the variables, is demonstrated by preliminary experimental results.