Frank Sottile

Understanding, finding, or even deciding on the existence of real solutions to a system of equations is a difficult problem with many applications outside of mathematics. While it is hopeless to expect much in general, we know a surprising amount about these questions for systems which possess additional structure often coming from geometry. This book focuses on equations from toric varieties and Grassmannians. Not only is much known about these, but such equations are common in applications. There are three main themes: upper bounds on the number of real solutions, lower bounds on the number of real solutions, and geometric problems that can have all solutions be real. The book begins with an overview, giving background on real solutions to univariate polynomials and the geometry of sparse polynomial systems. The first half of the book concludes with fewnomial upper bounds and with lower bounds to sparse polynomial systems. The second half of the book begins by sampling some geometric problems for which all solutions can be real, before devoting the last five chapters to the Shapiro Conjecture, in which the relevant polynomial systems have only real solutions.

Real Solutions to Equations from Geometry

Ioannis Z. Emiris

Thorsten Theobald

An original motivation for algebraic geometry was to understand curves and surfaces in three dimensions. Recent theoretical and technological advances in areas such as robotics, computer vision, computer-aided geometric design and molecular biology, together with the increased availability of computational resources, have brought these original questions once more into the forefront of research. One particular challenge is to combine applicable methods from algebraic geometry with proven techniques from piecewise-linear computational geometry (such as Voronoi diagrams and hyperplane arrangements) to develop tools for treating curved objects. These research efforts may be summarized under the term nonlinear computational geometry. This volume grew out of an IMA workshop on Nonlinear Computational Geometry in May/June 2007 (organized by I.Z. Emiris, R. Goldman, F. Sottile, T. Theobald) which gathered leading experts in this emerging field. The research and expository articles in the volume are intended to provide an overview of nonlinear computational geometry. Since the topic involves computational geometry, algebraic geometry, and geometric modeling, the volume has contributions from all of these areas. By addressing a broad range of issues from purely theoretical and algorithmic problems, to implementation and practical applications this volume conveys the spirit of the IMA workshop.

Frank Sottile

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