Sieving for twin smooth integers with solutions to the Prouhet-Tarry-Escott problem Craig Costello1, Michael Meyer2;3, and Michael Naehrig1 1 Microsoft Research, Redmond, WA, USA fcraigco,
[email protected] 2 University of Applied Sciences Wiesbaden, Germany 3 University of W¨urzburg,Germany
[email protected] Abstract. We give a sieving algorithm for finding pairs of consecutive smooth numbers that utilizes solutions to the Prouhet-Tarry-Escott (PTE) problem. Any such solution induces two degree-n polynomials, a(x) and b(x), that differ by a constant integer C and completely split into linear factors in Z[x]. It follows that for any ` 2 Z such that a(`) ≡ b(`) ≡ 0 mod C, the two integers a(`)=C and b(`)=C differ by 1 and necessarily contain n factors of roughly the same size. For a fixed smoothness bound B, restricting the search to pairs of integers that are parameterized in this way increases the probability that they are B-smooth. Our algorithm combines a simple sieve with parametrizations given by a collection of solutions to the PTE problem. The motivation for finding large twin smooth integers lies in their application to compact isogeny-based post-quantum protocols. The recent key exchange scheme B-SIDH and the recent digital signature scheme SQISign both require large primes that lie between two smooth integers; finding such a prime can be seen as a special case of finding twin smooth integers under the additional stipulation that their sum is a prime p. When searching for cryptographic parameters with 2240 ≤ p < 2256, an implementation of our sieve found primes p where p + 1 and p − 1 are 215-smooth; the smoothest prior parameters had a similar sized prime for which p−1 and p+1 were 219-smooth.