Are Resultant Methods Numerically Unstable for Multidimensional Rootfinding?
Are resultant methods numerically unstable for multidimensional rootfinding? Noferini, Vanni and Townsend, Alex 2015 MIMS EPrint: 2015.51 Manchester Institute for Mathematical Sciences School of Mathematics The University of Manchester Reports available from: http://eprints.maths.manchester.ac.uk/ And by contacting: The MIMS Secretary School of Mathematics The University of Manchester Manchester, M13 9PL, UK ISSN 1749-9097 ARE RESULTANT METHODS NUMERICALLY UNSTABLE FOR MULTIDIMENSIONAL ROOTFINDING? VANNI NOFERINI∗ AND ALEX TOWNSENDy Abstract. Hidden-variable resultant methods are a class of algorithms for solving multidimen- sional polynomial rootfinding problems. In two dimensions, when significant care is taken, they are competitive practical rootfinders. However, in higher dimensions they are known to miss zeros, cal- culate roots to low precision, and introduce spurious solutions. We show that the hidden-variable resultant method based on the Cayley (Dixon or B´ezout)resultant is inherently and spectacularly numerically unstable by a factor that grows exponentially with the dimension. We also show that the Sylvester resultant for solving bivariate polynomial systems can square the condition number of the problem. In other words, two popular hidden-variable resultant methods are numerically unstable, and this mathematically explains the difficulties that are frequently reported by practitioners. Along the way, we prove that the Cayley resultant is a generalization of Cramer's rule for solving linear systems and generalize Clenshaw's algorithm to an evaluation scheme for polynomials expressed in a degree-graded polynomial basis. Key words. resultants, rootfinding, conditioning, multivariate polynomials, Cayley, Sylvester AMS subject classifications. 13P15, 65H04, 65F35 1. Introduction. Hidden-variable resultant methods are a popular class of al- gorithms for global multidimensional rootfinding [1, 17, 27, 35, 39, 40].
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